AWARDEE OF PHYSICS PRIZE

FAN HAIFU

Abstract

Fan Haifu, physicist, was born in Canton, China, 1933. He received his B. Sc. in 1956 at the Department of Chemistry, Beijing University. He has been appointed a member of the National Committee of Crystallography of China in 1987 and elected a member of the Commission on Crystallographic Computing at the 14th (1987-1990) and 15th (1990-1993) International Union of Crystallography. In 1991 Fan Haifu was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
While Fan Haifu was in Peking University he started working in crystallography under the supervision of Professor Tang You-qi.  In 1956 Fan came to the Institute of Physics, Beijing, and worked under the direction of Professor Wu Qian-zhang.  In early 1960's Fan was interested in solving the crystal structure of natural organic products from Chinese drugs. He felt that the methods for solving crystal structures are far from completion, Since then he turned gradually to the study of methods. While direct methods were still isolated with other methods of solving crystal structures, in 1965, Fan proposed the combination of direct methods with the heavy-atom method, the isomorphous replacement method and the anomalous scattering method for dealing with various kinds of “phase ambiguity” . The first combination led later to the direct method of solving superstructures.  While the last two combinations led to a hot topic in the study of direct methods since the 1980's till now.
During the “great cultural revolution” , Fan did not stop from thinking.  He  proposed the direct method for solving superstructures and was dreaming on the  combination of electron microscopy with diffraction analysis.
From the 1960's to the 1970's there has been a great progress on direct methods  owing mainly to the contribution of H. Hauptman, J. Karle, I. L. Karle and M. M.  Woolfson.  This led to a revolution in structural chemistry.  Thus, H. Hauptman and J. Karle received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1985.  During the 14th Congress of the International Union of Crystallography at Perth, Australia, 1987, there was a symposium “New Developments in Direct Methods” in honor of J. Karle and H. Hauptman.  The symposium was chaired by M. M. Woolfson and had five speakers: H. Hauptman, J.  Karle, H. Schenk, G. Bricogne and Fan Hai-fu.  Fan' s talk was entitled “Outside the traditional field”. He called attention to new applications of direct methods and pointed out ways to go from the traditional field: (1) from single crystals to powder samples; (2) from small molecules to biological macromolecules; (3) from perfect crystals to imperfect crystals; (4) from X-ray crystallography to electron microscopy.  In the following years Fan and his colleagues gained impressive results on three of the above topics.  The study of direct methods for proteins led to new procedures, which manage to work with fewer experimental data and simpler manipulation.  The application of direct methods to imperfect crystals resulted in direct methods of solving incommensurate modulated structures, which dose not rely on any assumed model.  By introducing direct methods into electron microscopy, an image processing technique was developed which combines high resolution electron microscopy with electron diffraction analysis enabling a single high resolution electron micrograph be deconvoluted and enhanced to reveal individual atoms.
Fan Hai-fu is called upon to give invited talks at universities, research institutions and international meetings around the world. He has received the TWAS Award in Physics from the Third World Academy of Sciences in 1996. As the result of a long-term international joint project, a book has been published： M. M. Woolfson (FRS) & Fan Hai-fu Physical and Non-physical Methods of Solving Crystal Structures, London:Cambridge University Press,1995.