AWARDEE OF TECHNOLOGICAL SCIENCES PRIZE

LI HENGDE

Abstract

Li,Hengde, male, was born on June 30,1921 in Luoyang, Henan Province in China.  He graduated from the   National Northwestern College of Engineering of China in 1942 with a B.S. degree in Mining and   Metallurgy.  He worked in a steel works and then in an aircraft company from 1942 to 1945 before he went   to USA in 1946 to pursue his graduate studies.
He attended Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and obtained Ms M.S. in 1947 and started his   career as a materials scientist since then.  He worked one year under Prof.  Paul Beck in Notre Dame   University and finally moved to University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia to finish his Doctor's degree   in 1953 under the direction of Prof.R.M.Brick and to work as a research associate until he returned to China   in 1954.
He became an associate and then full professor of Tsinghua University, Beijing, China since 1955. He established the Nuclear Materials Division of the Department of Engineering Physics of Tsinghua  University in 1956 and later on became the director of that department in 1982-1986.  He served as the director of the Institute of Materials of Research of Tsinghua University from 1979 to 1997.  From 1986 to 1994 he served also as the director of the Department of Materials and Engineering Sciences of the newly formed National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).  He was consecutively elected as the President of Chinese Materials Research Society (C-MRS) both in 1991 and 1995, each term for 4 years. He was also elected in 1996 in Boston as the First Vice President of the International Union of Materials Research Societies (IUMRS) to serve the term for 1997 and 1998 and also the President of IUMRS for the   years of 1999 and 2000. He seated in a number of national award committees. In 1994 he was elected as a  member of the newly founded Chinese Academy of Engineering.
Prof. Li's research interest has been rather broad. He was one of the earliest scientists to work on the   metal Beryllium in the late forties. He spent five years to study the plastic deformation behavior of Be single crystals from room temperature to 500 C. His work enabled people to understand and explain the  brittleness of Be from the basis of its inherent deformation mechanism.  He also had the opportunities to do research on the thermal cycling and irradiation growth of Uranium. He tried to study the irradiation growth of graphite by simulation with proton bombardment.  He studied the gel-precipitation method to prepare UO  kemels. He made extensive studies on the orientation distribution of zirconium hydrides in thin walled   Zircalloy tubing. He was able to establish connections between the preferred orientation of Zircalloy and   the distribution factors of zirconium hydrides in the tubing so as to enable the orientation distribution of the zirconium hydrides to be under control.
He shifted his interest since 1978 to the area of ion beam modification of metals.  He and his collaborators have published more than 100 papers in this area in international journals. They studied systematically, by  using cross cylinder method, the tribological behavior of various steels after nitrogen implantation. This  work drew attentions from their peers and the results were widely cited. Their works on the nitrogen implantation on titanium alloys used as hip joints were also extensive and of practical significance.
Prof. Li became also interested in natural bioceramics and biomimetics.  He and his coworkers made   extensive observations of the structures of the nacre layer of mollusk shells.  With the help of the Ion Beam   Assisted Deposition equipment they developed they were able to make many heterogeneous nanometer   scaled multilaycrs of ceramic/metal systems and have their mechanical properties characterized.