Li Lin

Li Lin (; 31 October 1923 – 31 May 2003) was a Chinese physicist. She made important contributions to China's metallurgy, nuclear power, and high-temperature superconductivity programs, and was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980. Her father Li Siguang and husband Chen-Lu Tsou were also prominent scientists and academicians.

Early life and education

Li was born Li Xizhi in Beijing on 31 October 1923, with her ancestral home in Huanggang, Hubei Province. Her father Li Siguang (J. S. Lee) was a renowned geologist and professor at Peking University, and her mother Xu Shubin was a pianist and schoolteacher.

From 1934 to 1936, she lived in England where her father was teaching. After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, her family sought refuge in Shanghai and then in Guilin, Guangxi, which was free from Japanese occupation.

Career After they both earned their PhDs in 1951, Li and Tsou returned to the newly established People's Republic of China. Li worked for the Shanghai Institute of Metallurgy, and Tsou for the Shanghai Institute of Physiology and Biochemistry, both under the umbrella of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

In 1956, nuclear physicist Qian Sanqiang recruited Li to work on China's nuclear energy program. After finishing her heavy water reactor project, in 1958 she was transferred to the Institute of Physics of the CAS in Beijing. She spent the next 14 years working on the nuclear program. Their daughter, geologist Zou Zongping , was born in the 1950s in China. Tsou became a prominent biochemist and was also elected an academician of the CAS, making the Li-Tsou family the only one in China that produced three academicians (including Li Siguang).

Li Lin died on 31 May 2003, at the age of 79.