Zhao Gang

Zhao Gang was born in 1961, in Liaoning Province. He obtained his Ph.D. at Nanjing University in 1990. He is now professor and Ph.D. supervisor of the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences. For the past 20 years, he has been working on observational astronomy in China, and has obtained great achievements with important implications internationally. Being selected in the first Hundred Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and winning the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, he is also the winner of China Young Scientist Award. Besides, he is the leading person of Second Prize of the 2008 National Natural Science Award. Currently, he is a member of physics and astronomy team of the sixth Discipline Review Group of State Council Academic Degrees Committee, and director of the Key Laboratory of Optical Astronomy, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Zhao Gang took the lead in researches on chemical abundances of various stellar objects and laboratory astrophysics in China. He established the first large sample of metalpoor dwarfs with highresolution spectroscopic observations, and accomplished the systematically quantitative analysis of their chemical abundances. He, for the first time, derived the new empirical formula of the effect of collisions of neutral hydrogen atoms on spectral lines. He adopted the method of abundance analysis on searching and researches on candidates of extrasolar planetary systems. He opened up the frontier field of simulating astrophysical conditions in laboratories. His researches have been cited by a number of articles in the most authoritative astronomical journal worldwide, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ARA&A, with an impact factor of 25.640), and by the review, Forty Years of Progress in Stellar Nucleosynthesis (Rev. Mod. Phys. 69, 995; with an impact factor of 33.145). His systematic results of large samples are regarded classic and recorded in textbooks and monographs. The research group founded and led by Zhao Gang is rigorous and innovative. They have longterm been closely collaborated with institutes of Germany, Japan, U.S., France, Russia, etc. The group focuses on quantitative analysis of stellar spectra, the structure and chemical evolution of the Galaxy, searching and abundance analysis of extrasolar planetary systems, and laboratory astrophysics, and has become a team with important influence in related fields over the world.