AWARDEE OF EARTH SCIENCES PRIZE

SU JILAN

Su Jilan, Physical Oceanographer, was born in December 1935 in Youxian, Hunan Province. He received his bachelor degree in Civil Engineering from the National Taiwan University in 1957, master degree in Engineering Mechanics from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1961 and Ph. D. in aeronautical sciences from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967. He taught first at the Engineering Sciences Department of the State University of New York at Buffalo and then at the Ocean Engineering Department of the Florida Atlantic University (tenured in 1977). In 1979, Dr. Su took a leave to visit the Second Institute of Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration in Hangzhou. He joined the same Institute in 1980 and has been there since then. He was the Director of the Institute from 1994-1999 and is currently the Director of the Laboratory of Ocean Dynamic Processes and Satellite Oceanography, State Oceanic Administration. He served as a member on the Executive Committee of the Scientific Committee on Oceanic Research (SCOR) (1988-1992), Vice-Chairman of the Standing Committee of the Division of Earth Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences (1992-1998), Chairman of the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) (1999-2003). Currently he serves both as a Vice-President of the Chinese Society of Oceanography and as a Vice-President of the Chinese Society of Oceanology and Limnology. Dr. Su was elected the academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991, Fellow of the Third World Academy of Sciences in 1994 and foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1999.
Since 1980 Su’s research interests have been focused on circulation dynamics of coastal oceans and estuaries. In particular, he paid special attention to the influence of the Kuroshio on the coastal ocean circulation of the Yellow Sea, East China Sea and South China Sea. He was the Principal Scientist (Chinese side) of the China-Japan Joint Research Program on the Kuroshio (1986-1992). He collaborated with oceanographers from the Taiwan Province in carrying out several extensive observation of the South China Sea in the 1990s. Since the early 1990s he has been promoting, in collaboration with Chinese fishery oceanographers, the study of ocean ecosystem dynamics in China. He was a Co-Principal Scientist of the major project of the Natural Science Foundation of China on the ecosystem dynamics of the Bohai Sea, which paid special attention to, among others, the recruitment of the Penaeus Chinensis.