Lu Yonggen

Lu Yonggen (; 2 December 1930 – 12 August 2019) was a Chinese agronomist, plant geneticist, and philanthropist. He served as President of South China Agricultural University from 1983 to 1995, and was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1993. He was named China's second most generous philanthropist in 2017 after donating his entire life savings to his university.

Early life and education Lu was born on 2 December 1930 in British Hong Kong, into a middle-class family that hailed from Hua County (now Huadu), Guangdong province. When the Japanese attacked Hong Kong in 1941, his father sent him to Hua County for safety, where he became familiarized with agricultural practices. He returned to Hong Kong two years later for middle school. He formed a close relationship with Ding Ying, the first president of the college, and served as the latter's research assistant and secretary from 1962 to 1964. From 2012 to 2017 alone, his team developed 33 new rice breeds. During his tenure, he broke from the old seniority-based system and promoted promising young scientists directly to professorship.

In 2017, Lu and his wife, Professor Xu Xuebin , donated their entire lifetime savings of 8.8 million yuan (US$1.34 million) to South China Agricultural University. and he was selected as one of the ten people featured on China Central Television's annual program People Who Moved China.