AWARDEE OF TECHNOLOGICAL SCIENCES PRIZE

KE JUN

Abstract

Professor Ke Jun, a materials scientist, was born on 23 June, 1917. Graduated from Chemistry Wuhan University in 1938, he joined the war-time govermment Industrial and Mining Adjustment Administration, serving successively as assistant engineer and Department  head of Materials supply and finally its Representative in India until 1944, when he left for England with an Imperial Chemical Industries Fellowship in the University of Birmingham. He was appointed a Lecturer in the Department of Theoretical Metallurgy in 1948, and received his ph.D. in the same year.
Ke left England in 1953, and joined in 1954 the Bejing University of Iron and Steel Technology, now renamed the  Beijing University of Science and Technology. He held the posts of Professor, head of the School of Materials Physics and Chemistry, the vice president of the University, and then the advisor to the president in 1984. He was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980, and was awarded in 1984 the degree of Doctor of Science, h.c. from the McMaster University of Canada, and that of Doctor of University, h.c. from the University of Surrey, England in 1988.
Kes first academic contribution was on the mechanism of the overheating of steel, when he showed the dissolution of manganese sulphide inclusions in a steel during overheating and its redeposition on the grain boundaries and crystallographic planes, causing embrittlement. His studies on the mechanism of bainite transformation in steel, which occurs in a temperature range between that of pearlite and martensite transformations, have led to very active research on bainite in the world for nearly four decades. Experimental results have led to almost general acceptance of the original suggestion, that the bainitic structure is formed by a shear displacive movment of the solvent matrix atoms similar to that during martensite formation, but involving diffusional movement of solute atoms. Ke made also fruitful efforts in the sixties on the development of steels with low strategic alloying elements, which were embargoed to the Peoples Republic.
Kes archaeomtrical studies on the development of ancient Chinese metallurgy, especially that of cast iron and steelmaking therefrom in the last half millenium of the pre-Christian era, and its historical significance in the development of the Chinese civilization have attracted wide interest. He was elected for two consecutive terms the president of the Chinese Society of the History of Science and Technology, the president of the Chinese Society of Archaeometry, an assessor of the Division of History of Science of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science, and the founding vice president of the International Society of EAst Asia Science, Technology and Medicine.
Ke Jun has been active in the reformation of metallurgy and materials education in China. Apart from the establishment in 1956 of a new School of Metal Physics and Chemistry, which has graduated since 1962 over 1600 scholars, mostly with diplomas corresmonding to the degree of master of science, others that of B.Sc. and  Ph.D. with strong background of mathematics and physics, he has particpated actively in the effort of reforming the engineering edcuation in China with broader and stronger basic science and engineering training and desirable attainments in the graduates abilities. He was appointed in 1996 deputy head of the Advisory Borard for Higher Education Reformation by the State Commission of Eudcation of China.