AWARDEE OF EARTH SCIENCES PRIZE

GUO LINGZHI

Abstract

Prof. Guo Lingzhi, tectonic geologist, was born in April, 1915 in Anlu, Hubei Province. He was graduated from the Department of Geology, National Central University in 1938. From 1938 to 1949, Guo worked in the National Central University, the National Yunnan University, the National Institute of Geography, the Taiwan University and the Taiwan Institute of Oceanography, respectively. He researched on structural geology and geography in the Royal College, University of London, U.K. from 1949 to 1951. Since 1951, he has been Professor of Earth Sciences, Nanjing University and was the Vice-President, Acting President and Consultant of University during 1982-1987. He was elected to be a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1993.
Prof. Guo has made important contributions to the Chinese education and scientific researches, specially the South China tectonics. For the past decades, he has been one of the prominent in his field.
In the 1940's, he surveyed in the Southwest China, the Qinghai-Tibet and the Nansha Archipelago and discovered the first time the Cenozoic conglomerate and large scale fold-thrust body in the Dabashan, Sichuan Province. He also published research results about the classify and formation mechanism of the coral reef of the Taiping Island, Hainan Province.
During the 1950s-1960s, he studied and established the tectonic framework of South China Caledonian geosyncline system, proposed a viewpoint of “the Jiangnan Old Island Arc".
In China, Guo is one of the earliest and outstanding urgers “using plate tectonics theory to study China geology and tectonics". Since the middle 1970's, he and his research group studied tectonic features of South China, discovering the first time the important evidence of Proterozoic plate movement in the Jiangnan region: ophiolitic melange, CA-type volcanic rock series and island arc-type flysch, proposing the eight geological marks confirming ancient plate boundaries within continental block. He established the South China trench-arc-back-arc basin composite system with a subduction sense from southeast to northwest, causing a crustal growth and granitic evolution successively from northwest to southeast. He obtained also excellent results in the Western Pacific Mesozoic-Cenozoic active continental margins, the collage and accretion of the Southeast China terranes with different ages, collision tectonics, Phanezoic magmatism, metallization, and Mesozoic-Cenozoic petroleum and gas basins related to tectonism in East China.
Guo Lingzhi has published in domestic and international academic journals more than 150 papers and three scientific monographys. He won three National Prizes of Natural Sciences (2nd class prize and 3rd class prizes) and five Province or Ministry Prizes of Science and Technology Progress (1st class prize, three 2nd class prize and 3rd class prize), etc.