Author丨Feng Lifei
Zhuang Changgong
Character introduction
Zhuang Changgong, courtesy name Pike, was born in Quanzhou, Fujian. Organic chemist and educator, pioneer of steroid chemistry in China and founder of organic trace analysis. He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1921 and received his doctorate from the school in 1924. In 1948, he was elected as an academician of Academia Sinica. In 1955, he was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Died on February 15, 1962.
He has made outstanding contributions to organic synthesis, especially the synthesis of steroid compounds and the structural research of natural organic compounds. The structure of ergosterane was confirmed, the structure of ergosterol was speculated, and a synthetic method with horny methyl diketone a-ketone was designed, which is called "Zhuang's method". He studied the oxidative cleavage of steroid side chains. He was one of the few well-known chemists in the world who was engaged in the total synthesis of steroids at that time. His work was once introduced into textbooks. Fangtangine and fangjinolinine were isolated from the traditional Chinese medicine Tetrapangoside, and their structures were elucidated. He paid attention to and participated in the formulation of Chinese nomenclature for organic chemistry. He initiated the currently used names of heterocyclic compounds such as indole and pyrrole.
He emphasizes the spirit of innovation in his research work and advocates the academic thought of "doing something before doing something". He promoted the establishment of the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry and the Beijing Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1956, he was appointed as a member of the Science and Planning Committee of the State Council and participated in the formulation of the "Outline of the Science and Technology Development Plan for 1956-1967" and other documents. He once served as dean of the Chemistry Department of Northeastern University, dean of the School of Science of National Central University, director of the Chemistry Institute of Academia Sinica, president of National Taiwan University, and director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
When it comes to Zhuang Changgong, there is an incident that once became a legend at Northeastern University. That was when he was working at Northeastern University. One Sunday, he took a worker to do an experiment in the laboratory. When he was concentrating on the experiment, he handed a glass bottle to the person standing behind him and said: "Please wash it clean." The man replied: "I know, Professor Zhuang!" and then laughed out loud. He looked back and saw the principal Zhang Xueliang behind him. Zhang Xueliang raised his thumbs up and said: "You are a real scientist!"
This shows that Zhuang Changgong is serious about his research work. Innovation, perseverance, integrity, and diligence are the impressions students and colleagues have of him. Today, the face of scientific research in China has taken on a completely new look compared to 70 years ago, but many interviewees told China Science News that the qualities of older generation scientists such as Zhuang Changgong still shine brightly and are worth learning from today’s scientific researchers.
As a pioneer in the field of organic chemistry in China, Zhuang Changgong has been engaged in scientific research and higher education throughout his life. His research on the synthesis of steroid compounds enjoys a reputation in the international organic chemistry community. He founded the first organic trace analysis laboratory in China, trained a number of academic leaders such as Gao Yisheng and Huang Yaozeng, and initiated organic chemistry terms such as indole, Pyrrole and others are still in use today. Guo Moruo, then president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, called him “a banner in the Chinese chemical community.”
Through the Troubled Times, Standing Chemistry
Zhuang Changgong was born on December 25, 1894 in a declining scholar family in Quanzhou, Fujian. Funded by the Filipino overseas Chinese Zhuang Wangliao, he went to the United States for further studies at the University of Chicago when he was 25 years old. Witnessing the economic decline of southern Fujian at that time, he originally planned to study agricultural chemistry to engage in sugar cane production and save the country through industry. However, after being persuaded by his doctoral supervisor Julius Stieglitz, he understood that engaging in basic research could also serve the motherland.
In 1924, Zhuang Changgong returned to China after completing his studies. He first stayed briefly at Wuhan University, and then went to Northeastern University as professor and director of the Department of Chemistry. He not only teaches chemistry courses, but also conducts basic research, leading students to publish research articles on the chemical composition of Chinese herbal medicines such as Scrophulariaceae, Wolfsbane, and Alisma. In 1931, after the September 18th Incident, the Northeast fell. He refused to succumb to the enemy and left the Northeast.
Subsequently, Zhuang Changgong went to Germany as a visiting scholar. While working in the laboratory of A. Windaus, a Nobel laureate and professor at the University of G?ttingen, he used careful planning and superb experimental skills to solve the unsolved ergot problems of Windaus and others. Problems with the structure of steranes, and the structure of ergosterol was speculated. Since the structures of ergosterol and vitamin D are related, the relevant results quickly attracted attention after being published in the "Annals of Liebig Chemistry". The oxidation method he used later became the method used in the industrial production of steroid hormones.
Nobel Prize winner P. Karrer listed this paper in "Textbook of Organic Chemistry". "This was an internationally accepted organic chemistry textbook in the 1940s. The edition published in 1942 listed 166 documents. Among them, only Zhuang Changgong's article on ergosterol was written by a Chinese." Dai, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Introduction by Lixin. This work has since been mentioned in two other American monographs.
This enhanced Zhuang Changgong’s confidence in bringing glory to the country in the field of basic research, and he decided to bring the international cutting-edge topic of total synthesis of steroid chemistry back to China for research. Steroids have complex structures and many asymmetric carbon atoms. At that time, only a few people in the world dared to ask about them. Zhuang Changgong and several graduates of National Central University and Northeastern University worked hard. From 1935 to 1941, they published 14 papers in the most famous German journal "Journal of the Chemical Society" in the world at that time.
But the time when Zhuang Changgong was most productive happened to be when our country was in dire straits. The all-out Japanese invasion forced him to "change jobs" frequently. During this period, he worked successively in the Chemistry Department of National Central University, the Chemistry Institute of Academia Sinica, the Institute of Materia Medica of Peking Research Institute, and other institutions. He moved to Nanjing, Shanghai, Kunming and other places, and even stopped working. As a result, his research on the sex hormone emasterone lost its lead in competition with European and American teams. Still, its results attracted international attention.
"Mr. Zhuang's work in artificially synthesizing steroid compounds was very advanced in the world at that time and was unprecedented. Judging from the magazines in which he published articles, his work has been internationally recognized." Dai. Lixin said. Regarding this, in the fifth issue of "Science Monthly" in 1992, Liu Guangding, emeritus professor of the Department of Chemistry, National Taiwan University, also wrote: "His success can give the Chinese people confidence."
More than that, Zhuang Changgong also established the discipline of organic trace analysis for the first time in China. At that time, various spectroscopic instruments had not yet come out. Organic trace analysis was the most important method for determining structure. However, due to the small amount, it required hard work to master. While researching in Germany, he went to the laboratory of F. Pregl, a Nobel laureate at the University of Graz in Austria, to learn organic trace analysis technology and ordered relevant instruments. Today, when people visit the exhibition hall of the history of the Institute of Organic Chemistry, they can still see the microbalance he brought back from Austria.
Everyone is responsible for the prosperity of academic disciplines
A flower blooming alone is not spring, only hard work can serve the country. Zhuang Changgong never forgot this original intention.
As early as 1923, Zhuang Changgong organized the Chinese Chemical Society in the United States with Li Baoqing, a chemical scholar living in the United States, and planned to publish the "Journal of the Chinese Chemical Society" to publish research topics, but unfortunately it was not published. After the Chinese Chemical Society was established in 1932, he actively participated.
Zhuang Changgong has long recognized that quality rather than quantity is an important factor in improving international academic status. While serving as the director of the Institute of Chemistry of Academia Sinica, he changed the way in which the institute writes its own research reports, edits and publishes them, requiring colleagues to submit their research results to first-class journals at home and abroad, and then compile them after they are officially published. "In just a few years, the institute's research achievements have greatly improved." Liu Guangding wrote. Unfortunately, the ensuing war deprived the Chinese scientific community at that time of the opportunity to learn and promote this method.
In 1948, after returning from an inspection trip to the United States, Zhuang Changgong became the president of National Taiwan University. However, due to the difficulty in dismissing some old faculty members with connections, and the encounter with Kuomintang agents who broke into the school without authorization to arrest students, he was Unable to carry out school affairs, he finally left Taiwan. After returning to Shanghai, he made a living by reviewing manuscripts at home.
After the founding of New China in 1949, Zhuang Changgong was quickly hired as a preparatory committee member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1950, he was appointed as the first director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the early days of establishing the institute, he recruited talents extensively, adjusted research directions, and created conditions for the development of organic chemistry in New China. “Many of his ideas were very new, and some of his insights and opinions played an important role at the time.” Dai Lixin gave an example of establishing an organic institute with secondary disciplines.
Zhuang Changgong always keeps up with the pace of new science and technology. "At that time, as the director of the two new fields of polymers and antibiotics developed by the Institute of Organic Chemistry, he continued to learn and master the latest scientific knowledge." Dai Lixin, who joined the Institute of Organic Chemistry in 1953, assisted Zhuang Changgong in collecting literature on polymer research. The latter's research and truth-seeking and pragmatic spirit deeply impressed him.
After that, the polymer group of the Institute of Organic Chemistry moved to Beijing and became a main force of the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Zhuang Changgong was appointed chairman of the institute's preparatory committee.
In addition, Zhuang Changgong has also served as an editorial board member of "Journal of the Chinese Chemical Society" and "Acta Chemical Society" for a long time. He attaches great importance to Chinese organic chemistry terms and often says that this is a prerequisite for the development of chemistry in China. Some of the commonly used organic chemistry terms now, such as indole, pyrrole and other heterocyclic terms, are all his creativity.
Excellence in work comes from diligence, and success comes from thinking
Zhuang Changgong is not only a scientist, but also an educator. His students and colleagues at that time, such as Xing Qiyi, Tian Yulin, Gao Yisheng, Huang Yaozeng, Zhu Renhong, etc., later became the person in charge of leading a teaching unit or research unit.
According to the memories of Tian Yulin and others, Zhuang Changgong prepared his lessons very carefully and always thought over and over how to teach students to understand easily. Therefore, during the lectures, the students often "listened to him like they were possessed and listened with gusto." When discussing problems with him, people can "really feel like a spring breeze."
Zhuang Changgong’s love for science has a subtle influence on students. Tian Yulin and others wrote in an article recalling their mentor that he had a month's vacation as usual during the summer. Once, within a week, he rushed back to participate in the experiment. When he designs a research route, he often consults many documents and even stays up all night.
Zhuang Changgong emphasized that scientific research must have a rigorous attitude. When his work on the structure of ergosterol was published, a colleague in the Windaus laboratory believed that his success was due to good luck. Zhuang Changgong replied: "Scientific research does not rely on luck. It must have strong perseverance, a rigorous attitude, and a keen mind." Only by observing can you achieve success." He often teaches students this.
Zhuang Changgong also attaches great importance to family education. Influenced by their father, two of the three Zhuang Yahui brothers chose chemistry. In Zhuang Yahui's impression, what his father said the most was "do something before you do anything", "take the best method and get the most out of it", and "fight against the odds, put yourself to death and survive".
“My father asked me to choose innovative, meaningful and valuable directions when doing scientific research, and to be able to sit on the bench, to put myself in a situation where there is no way out, and to work wholeheartedly Overcome difficulties." From taking up a scientific research position to later serving as the director of the Ecological Environment Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, his father's words have always been engraved in Zhuang Yahui's heart.
On an inspection trip to the Northeast, Zhuang Changgong unfortunately contracted an illness, and his health deteriorated from then on. He passed away in Shanghai on February 15, 1962.
In order to commemorate Zhuang Changgong’s contribution to basic chemical research, the Shanghai Society of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering has established the Zhuang Changgong Chemical Science and Technology Progress Award in 1993 to encourage young and middle-aged researchers who have made outstanding contributions to basic research. In 2017, Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry and East China Normal University jointly established the Zhuang Changgong Research Institute. "Named after Mr. Zhuang, we want to give the institute a distinctive personality and first-class genes." said He Mingyuan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Career is accomplished by hard work but neglected by play; success is achieved by thinking but destroyed by casualness. Zhuang Changgong once passed Han Yu's words to Huang Yaozeng, and Huang Yaozeng passed them on to Dai Lixin's generation. In this regard, Dai Lixin said: "It is one thing to have genius or not. If young people want to do well in a field, they need to be diligent and innovative."
Zhuang Changgong's pen calligraphy and seal< /p>
Zhuang Changgong’s calligraphy
In 1952, Zhuang Changgong attended a meeting of all staff of the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Reporter's Notes
No fooling around in scientific research
During the writing process of Zhuang Changgong, the founder of science, an image lingered in my mind Don’t go: In the context of raging war and displacement of people, there is always a person doing research in front of the test bed.
He was not only actively engaged in research, but also aimed at the synthesis of sterol compounds, the most difficult direction of organic chemistry in the 1930s. He is not deterred by the backwardness of my country's chemical research environment and equipment, and is determined to compete with European and American teams to lay the foundation for China's research.
Zhuang Changgong published more than ten papers in his life. The number is not large, but they all have high academic value. At a time when people in China were panicking, he chose to engage in pioneering work and achieved a series of internationally recognized results, which reflected his extraordinary foresight, extraordinary courage and perseverance.
What also impressed me deeply was his strategic thinking on scientific development: quality over quantity.
He has long had a global mindset and believes that first-class research results should be linked to international standards. And put this idea into practice at work, both by yourself and others. This is of particular reference significance for current scientific research.
Today, judging from the country’s emphasis on scientific research and financial support, we can proudly say that we are doing science at the best time and in the best place. At present, our country ranks first in the world in the number of published papers, but we need to always be vigilant and do not do scientific research for the sake of publishing papers. China needs more truly valuable results to solidify its scientific research foundation.
Compared with some well-known scientists, there is less information about Zhuang Changgong. In this interview, in addition to a few articles, the author was fortunate enough to contact Academician Dai Lixin, who had been in contact with him, and his eldest son, Zhuang Yahui, former director of the Ecological Environment Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and was able to gain a glimpse into the life of this pioneer of Chinese organic chemistry.
Recalling his father, Zhuang Yahui still remembers an incident 70 years ago. After a middle school exam, he discovered that his teacher had added one hundred points less to him when calculating his total grade. The young man, who was still brooding over this matter after returning home, cried. After asking for the reason, his father said to him: "Didn't this not affect your grades? Studying depends on scores, which doesn't explain anything." This made him know how to do things. Don't take things superficially.
Zhuang Changgong gave his passion to chemistry, but he was very indifferent to money and fame. Zhuang Yahui's grandfather was a national capitalist, and most of his relatives and friends on his mother's side were wealthy people. They secretly called Zhuang Changgong a "weird son-in-law" who didn't like to deal with people and didn't know how to get money. However, Zhuang Changgong changed his mind after knowing about it. Don't care.
From some small things, you can feel the warmth of this scientist's life and work. When Zhuang Changgong worked at the Chemistry Institute of Academia Sinica, his salary was relatively high, and he provided financial aid to some of Zhuang Yahui's brothers' classmates from poor families. He felt that he was able to study in the United States only because of the financial support of others.
His actions also reflect his love for this country. After the victory of World War II, Lily Pharmaceuticals in the United States hired him with an annual salary of tens of thousands of dollars, but he was not interested. The German pharmaceutical company Bayer wanted to buy his patent, but he replied that the results were not private. In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, our country was short of foreign exchange. He exchanged the foreign exchange he had saved during his previous inspection tours in the United States with banks, converted it into RMB, and donated it all to the country to support the war against U.S. aggression and aid Korea.
Today’s world is changing so fast that sometimes we have to be carried away by time. We have no time to think about what we really need and no time to look back at what we are missing. Perhaps, we need to stop in the rush and talk to those thoughtful and warm souls in the history of science, so that we can better move forward on the road of scientific research.
Biography
● Born on December 25, 1894 in Quanzhou, Fujian.
●1916-1919, studied at Peking National Agricultural College. In 1919, he was admitted to Tsinghua University as a subsidized student studying in the United States, but because he received financial support from overseas Chinese, he went directly to study in the United States.
●1922-1924, studied in the Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago, USA, and received a doctorate in philosophy.
●In 1924, he taught for a short time at Wuchang University in Hubei Province.
●1925-1931, served as professor and director of the Department of Chemistry, Northeastern University, Fengtian. From 1926 to 1933, he served as a research lecturer for the Board of Directors of the China Education and Culture Fund.
●1931-1933, he served as a research lecturer on the board of directors of the University of G?ttingen and the University of Munich in Germany and the China Education and Culture Fund.
●1933-1930, Professor of Chemistry Department and Dean of School of Science at Nanjing National Central University.
●1934-1938, served as director of the Institute of Chemistry of the National Academia Sinica in Shanghai/Kunming. From 1934 to 1945, he was a research professor on the Board of Directors of the China Education and Culture Foundation. In 1935, he served as the first member of the Academia Sinica.
●1939-1942, he served as a researcher at the Institute of Materia Medica, Shanghai National Peking Research Institute. In 1940, he was elected as a member of the second council of Academia Sinica.
●1942-1945, he served as researcher and acting director of the Institute of Materia Medica, Kunming National Peking Research Institute.
●1946-1947, went to the United States to investigate organic chemistry and medicinal chemistry research.
●In 1948, he was elected as an academician of Academia Sinica.
●From June 1948 to December 1948, he served as the president of National Taiwan University.
●1950-1954, he served as researcher and director of the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai. In 1955, he was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and concurrently served as deputy director of the Department of Mathematical and Physical Chemistry.
●Died of illness in Shanghai on February 15, 1962.
"China Science News"
Click to try Heart of the King 2