Su Buqing

Su Buqing, also spelled Su Buchin (; September 23, 1902 – March 17, 2003), was a Chinese mathematician, educator and poet. He was the founder of differential geometry in China, and served as president of Fudan University and honorary chairman of the Chinese Mathematical Society. Su was engaged in research, teaching and education in differential geometry and computational geometry. In his early years, he made excellent contributions to affine differential geometry and projective differential geometry. He obtained extraordinary achievements in general space differential geometry, conjugating net theory in higher-dimensional space and computer aided geometry design.

Su's research on general surfaces led to the discovery of quartic algebraic surfaces of the third order. In recognition of his achievements, a geometric shape known as the "Su-cone" was named after him. In the 1940s, he made notable contributions to the theory of K-spreads, involving families of K-dimensional manifolds in space.

Throughout his career, Su authored over 160 mathematical papers published in both domestic and international journals. He also wrote more than 20 monographs and textbooks on topics such as projective curves, projective surfaces, and affine differential geometry. Su's main papers are included in Selected Works of Buqing Su (1991). Notable among his works are "The General Projective Theory of Curves," (English translation 1958) "Affine Differential Geometry," (English translation 1983) and "Computational Geometry, Curve and Surface Modeling," (Chinese 1980; English edition 1989) co-authored with Dingyuan Liu.

Honors and awards Su won the second prize of the first National Natural Science Award in 1956 for his work on "Geometry of K-spread Space and General Metric Space, Projective Curve Theory."

In 1978, his work, A Program of Hull Lofting, won the National Science Conference Award.

Su won the second prize of the first National Science and Technology Progress Award in 1985 for his collaborative effort on "A Production Process of the Hull Form by the Curved-Surface Method."

In 2001, the book, Geometry and Nonlinear Partial Differential Equations, which presents the proceedings of a conference on geometry and nonlinear partial differential equations, was dedicated to Su in honor of his one-hundredth birthday.

In August 2003, the International Council for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM) established the "ICIAM Su Buqing Award" in recognition to contributions to the application of mathematics in economic growth and human development. Furthermore, the Chinese Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (CSIAM) established the "CSIAM Su Buqing Applied Mathematics Award" in 2004.

Asteroid 297161 Subuchin, discovered by astronomers of the PMO NEO Survey Program in 2008, was named in his memory.