Li Minhua

Li Minhua (; 2 November 1917 – 19 January 2013), also known as Minghua Lee Wu, was a Chinese aerospace engineer and physicist who was an expert in solid mechanics. The first woman to earn a PhD in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she was one of the founding scientists at the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), and was elected as an academician in 1980. Her husband Wu Zhonghua was also an accomplished physicist and CAS academician.

Early life and education Li was born on 2 November 1917 in Wu County (now Suzhou), Jiangsu, China. She graduated from Wu Pen Girls' School in Shanghai and was admitted to Tsinghua University in 1935. After the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, Tsinghua and several other universities evacuated Beijing and moved south to Kunming, Yunnan Province, where they combined their diminished resources to form the temporary National Southwestern Associated University (Lianda). Deeply affected by Japanese aggression, Li chose to study aeronautical engineering in order to contribute to China's national defense. She was among the first class of students to graduate from Lianda's Department of Aeronautical Engineering in 1940, and was hired as a faculty member by the university.

Career in the United States In 1944, Li and Wu went to the United States to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Li studied mechanical engineering, while Wu specialized in the internal combustion engine. She gave birth to two sons while at MIT, and the couple took turns looking after the children.

After graduation from MIT, Li and Wu both joined the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, the predecessor of NASA) as research scientists. She published several NACA reports, and was elected to the Sigma Xi honor society. In 1959, she led a team that designed China's first instantaneous heat load testing system for the satellite carrier rocket. In the 1970s, she developed a method to analyze defects in aerospace turbomachinery, and won the 1978 Major Achievement Award from the CAS. Her research on engine defects led to her later focus on material fatigue, which she extensively researched until she was in her eighties. Starting in 1982, she organized a biennial national conference on material fatigue.

Li died on 19 January 2013, at the age of 95.