Huang Zhitang

AWARDEE OF CHEMISTRY PRIZE

HUANG ZHITANG

Huang Zhitang, an organic and polymer chemist, was born in May 1928 in Shanghai. He graduated from the Department of Chemistry of Shanghai Tongji University in 1951. Then he worked in Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). In 1956, he moved to Beijing and worked in Institute of Chemistry of CAS till now. He is a research professor of the Institute and has been as the chairman of Academic Committee and Committee for Graduate Study. He was elected the academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991.
From 1950s, he worked in the field of heat-resistant polymers, such as organosilicon polymers, epoxy and phenolic resins and so on, and developed some new type of heat-resistant resins and curing agents and make a great contributions as heat-shielding materials in the space technology. Then he continued his effort to develop a new type of crosslinked polyimide resin as a heat-resistant matrix and another type of novel heat-resistant resin based on triazine-crosslinked heterocyclic polymers. In the early 1980s he became interested in the chemistry of heterocyclic ketene aminals and synthesized more than 1500 new heterocycles from these synthons. In the middle of 1980s he also initiated research on calixarene-based supramolecular chemistry.
He has published more than 220 scientific papers. He has received several awards, including the third class of National Natural Science Prize (1995), the third class of National Invention Prize (1987, 1996), the first class of Natural Science Prize of CAS (1994).