Lin Lanying

Lin Lanying (; February 7, 1918 – March 4, 2003) was a Chinese electrical engineer, materials scientist, physicist, and politician. She is called the "mother of aerospace materials" and the "mother of semiconductor materials" in China.

In 1957, she returned to China and became a researcher at the Institute of Physics CAS. She then moved to the Institute of Semiconductor CAS and spent her research life there.

Among her many contributions include manufacturing China's first monocrystalline silicon, and the first mono-crystal furnace used to extract silicon in China. She laid the foundation of development in microelectronics and optoelectronics. She was responsible for developing extensive materials in a high-purified vapor phase and liquid phase and led China to become the world leader.

She was honored as Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences and became the vice president of China Association for Science and Technology. She received the National S&T Progress Award twice, and the first prize in CAS S&T Progress Award four times. In 1998, she was given the Henry Fok Achievement Award. In the political field, she was selected as a deputy to the National People's Congress and as a member of its Standing Committee.

Early life Lin was born in Putian City, Fujian Province, in southern China.

Lin Lanying was the first child born into a large and prestigious family, which could be traced back to the Ming dynasty 600 years before.

Education At age six, she wanted to go to school rather than housework and chatting with other women all day. The only escape was via education. Her mother was deeply influenced by Chinese social gender norms and forbid her to get an education. Lin locked herself in her room and swore that she would not eat unless she was allowed to go to school. Her mother was moved by her insistence, and finally allowed her to attend Liqing primary school. Lin often got the best grades in her class, while she was required to do all the washing and cooking. Then came studying that often kept her up to 12 AM. She got up to cook and then went to school. Her habit of sleeping six hours continued throughout her life.

She fought a similar battle to continue to Liqing middle school. Her mother said that as a female, literacy did not matter. She convinced her mother that if she did not need money to study, she could go. This middle school provided scholarships for students who got the three best grades each semester. Lin earned her scholarship every semester.

After finishing middle school, she enrolled in Putian high school. Her mother finally accepted her studies because of her success in middle school. However, Lin stayed in this school for only one year. Japan went to war with China and killed many Chinese people. A lot of the students became angry and held many parades to boycott Japan. Many Japanese soldiers and agents were in China, so the parades were suppressed and some students were killed. Lin transferred to a women's school called Hami Lton School. One of her teachers came from the United States and could not speak Chinese very well, so many of her classmates could not understand his courses. Lin helped the teacher as an assistant. When the teacher taught something in English, Lanying Lin would translate. Because of this, she was called ‘little teacher’.

She continued her study at Fukien Christian University, a top university at that time in China. She graduated at age 22 with a bachelor's degree in Physics as one of the best in her class. She worked at the university for 8 years, four years as an assistant to teach some fundamental courses such as mechanics. Her first book was Course for Experiments in Optics and earned certification as a professor.

Education in the United States Fukien Christian University had exchange programs with New York University at that time and many teachers who worked more than 2 years could study abroad. However, because she was not a Christian, she was excluded. So she applied to attend Dickinson College and earned a full scholarship and another bachelor's degree in mathematics with the help of her workmate Lairong Li in 1931. She then studied solid state physics at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1955, she received a doctorate degree there in solid-state physics and became the first Chinese national in a hundred years to earn a doctorate degree there. She thought that compared with math, physics was more applicable and more useful for China.

Career

United States Lanying wanted to return to China after graduation. However, the Chinese political situation was not good. At that time, the United States had many opportunities for scientists and including international students. Many Chinese students were not allowed to repatriate. Through the recommendation of her professor at the University of Pennsylvania, she decided to work as a senior engineer at the Sylvania Company which mainly manufactured semiconductors. At that time, the company had failed several times in making mono-crystalline silicon. Lanying discovered the problems and helped the company successfully engineer the silicon technology.

China After Lin had worked in America for a year, China signed a treaty during the Geneva Conference in 1956 that covered international students. On 6 January 1957, Lin returned to China after eight years. Just before she boarded, the Federal Bureau of Investigation approached her and threatened to withhold her earnings for the year of US$6,800, to persuade her to stay. Lin accepted this and boarded the ship.

Her family stayed poor because her salary was only 207 RMB, or 20 dollars a month. Her workplace had little money. However, she never gave up. In 1957, her workplace-Institute of Semiconductor CAS—finished making the first mono-crystalline germanium in China. By virtue of her experience in Sylvania Company, she knew the processes for making mono-crystalline silicon. However, she could not get equipment because of embargoes from other countries. She changed the process and made China's first mono-crystalline silicon in 1958. China became the third country to make mono-crystalline silicon. In 1962, she designed the mono-crystal furnace. This furnace was licensed to many countries. In the same year, she made the first mono-crystalline gallium arsenide in China. Lin's gallium arsenide achieved the highest mobility until that time.

The Cultural Revolution intervened. From 1966 to 1976, billions of people in China suffered from it. All educators and scientists were suppressed. Lin was not allowed to do research and had to stay in her room under the monitoring of authorities. Lin's educator father died during an assaulted by young people.

Despite the tragedy, she worked at age 60 after the Cultural Revolution. She found that the dislocation density of existing gallium arsenide was large due to gravity and not good enough to use, so she decided to make the experiment in artificial satellites. This was a dangerous experiment because the melting point of gallium arsenide is 1,238 Celsius degrees. However, she finished successfully and became the world's first to do so. Because of this work in gallium arsenide, the Chinese government named a gallium arsenide company (Chinese: 中科稼英 ) after her in 2001.

At age 78, in 1996, she was diagnosed with cancer. She had been working on building the semiconductor base in the southern part of China. When she was diagnosed, she asked, “Can someone give me another ten years? In ten years, I can definitely finish what I am doing and I can die with no regrets!” She wanted those years to offset the ten years lost to the Cultural Revolution. At 1:00 p.m. on March 4, 2003, she died.

Opinions about gender issues Throughout her life, she faced difficulties as a female. After she returned from the US, she joined the All-China Women's Federation. She held a lot of conferences and talked about gender issues. As a woman, she never accepted gender roles and always fought for herself. She believed that in the science field, women and men are equal and that the reason why fewer women are in this field is that women are more easily distracted by e.g., gossip, so women have to memorize more unrelated things and cannot focus on work.

Personal relationships

Qichang Guan and Cheng Lin Lin did not marry, but she loved two men.

Attributions and honors Lin was recognized in many forums:

Dislocations and Precipitates in Semi-Insulating Gallium Arsenide Revealed by Ultrasonic Abrahams-Buiocchi Etching Stoichiometric Defects in Semi-Insulating GaAs Interface Roughness Scattering in GaAs-AlGaAs Modulation-Doped Heterostructures Growth of GaAs Single Crystals at High Gravity Improvement of Stoichiometry in Semi-Insulating Gallium Arsenide Grown under Microgravity Magnetospectroscopy of Bound Phonons in High Purity GaAs Influence of DX centers in the AlxGa12xAs barrier on the low-temperature density and mobility of the two-dimensional electron gas in GaAs/AlGaAs modulation-doped heterostructure Influence of the semi-insulating GaAs Schottky pad on the Schottky barrier in the active layer Backgating and Light Sensitivity in GaAs Metal-Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors Photon Energy Dependence of SW Effect in α-Si:H Films Neutron Irradiation-Infrared Based Measurement Method for Interstitial Oxygen in Heavily Boron-Doped Silicon Properties and Applications of GaAs Single Crystal Grown under Microgravity Conditions Preliminary Results of GaAs Single Crystal Growth under High Gravity Conditions Spatial Distributions of Impurities and Defects in Te-and Si-doped GaAs Grown in a Reduced Gravity Environment Microdefects and electrical uniformity of InP annealed in phosphorus and iron phosphide ambiances Formation, structure and fluorescence of CdS clusters in a mesoporous zeolite Fabrication of novel double-hetero-epitaxial SOI structure Si/γ-Al2O3/Si Photostimulated luminescence of silver clusters in zeolite-Y Characterization of defects and whole wafer uniformity of annealed undoped semi-insulating InP wafers Very low-pressure VLP-CVD growth of high quality γ-Al2O3films on silicon by multi-step process Some new observation on the formation and optical properties of CdS clusters in zeolite-Y Growth of GaSb and GaAsSb in the single phase region by MOVPE Growth and properties of high purity LPE-GaAs New color centers and photostimulated luminescence of BaFCl:Eu2+ Channeling analysis of self-implanted and recrystallized silicon on sapphire Semi-insulating GaAs grown in outer space Neutron irradiation induced photoluminescence from silicon crystal grown in ambient hydrogen The influence of thickness on properties of GaN buffer layer and heavily Si-doped GaN grown by metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy The dependence of growth rate of GaN buffer layer on growth parameters by metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy Self-organization of the InGaAs/GaAs quantum dots superlattice Thermoluminescence of CdS clusters in zeolite-Y