CHENG JINPEIDr.  Cheng Jinpei, a physical organic chemist, born in June 1, 1948， in Tianjin, China. He graduated from Tianjin Normal University in 1975, received M.Sc. degree of Chemistry from Nankai University in 1981 and Ph.D degree from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois in 1987. After a postdoctoral research at Duke University, Durham, NC., he returned to China in 1988, and has worked at Nankai University as a faculty member ever since. Cheng was promoted to full professor in 1990, and served as NUs vice presidentresearch/academic during 1995-2000. In April, 2000, he was appointed to be the vice minister of Ministry of Science and Technology of China, while still remaining his professorship and active research activities at Nankai Univ. In 2001, he was elected  the academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the same year, he was voted by the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) to be a member. Cheng also serves as a board member of the China Academic Degree Commission of the State Council, a board member of the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), vice president of the Chinese Chemical Society, general secretary of the National Science and Technology Awards Committee of China, and a member of the Standing Commission of Chinese Peoples Political Consultant Conference.

Prof. Chengs research primarily focuses on energetics of chemical bonds and reactions. It is well understood that the research on bond energies are ambiguously important to chemistry and related fields, because chemical reaction can just be viewed as a process of bond reorganization and the bond energy (i.e., the minimum energy required to break a bond) is the determinant factor to the probability of such process, and if it occurs, the rate and the direction of the reaction. Prof. Chengs main contribution to this field is the establishment of various bondenergy methodologies. On the basis of systematic determinations of many series of chemical bonds, Cheng was able to disclose a number of unknown phenomena and rules of theoretical or practical importance in chemistry and life sciences, so as to theoretically explain or predict the characteristics of chemical substances and their reactions.

After his return to China, Prof. Cheng established a research laboratory on bond energies at Nankai University. This laboratory is the first and till now the only laboratory in this country that is capable of experimental determinations of all different types of bond dissociation energies in a comprehensive sense. This facility allowed Prof. Cheng and his students to carry out systematic studies of over a thousand unknown chemical bonds and to develop new theories or revise the existing ones. His contributions are exemplified as follows:

1 Pioneered the research on YNO bond energies in solution, and provided the database for the study of chemical essences of biological functions of NO. NO is the key biomessenger molecule in human body that plays an important role in regulating blood pressure, transmitting nervous responses, and acting as microphage in immune system, etc. In 1998, the Nobel Prize of Physiology and Medicine was awarded to NO research. Despite of the highimpact achievements of NO research in biology, the internal energydriven mechanism of NO migration that touches the chemical essence of NO functions has not been disclosed. The Chengs group introduced a new thermodynamic concept “NO Affinity”, defined as the YNO bond dissociation energy (Y is the atom in NOcarrier to which NO directly links), to NO research, and designed an experimental method to determine the YNO bond energies. On the basis of systematic determination and theoretic analysis on many series of NO bond energies of NO carriers, the Chengs group disclosed the energybased governing rules of NO transfer and its structureproperty relationships. This research not only provides a meaningful and logical explanation for the observed phenomena of NO migration reported in earlier literature, but also provides a useful thermodynamic tool for understanding or predicting the physiological functions of NO.

2. Revised the theories of radical substituent effects, revealed important regulations that were previously unknown. Though the significance of radicals to chemistry and biology is well understood, the knowledge on the structurereactivity relationships of radicals was, however, insufficiently reported in the literature. According to the literature, there was only one type of radical substituent effect: i.e., both electrondonating (EDG) and electronwithdrawing (EWG) substitution can stabilize a radical. It is thus called the “Class S” type (S refers to same direction). Based on comprehensive BDE studies, Chengs group demonstrated that one other type radical, the Class O (opposite) radical, i.e., radicals stabilized by EDG but destabilized by EWG, is commonly existed in polar radicals. They also first reported the existence of the CounterO (O) radicals. Further, they demonstrated that the key factor that governs the behavior of the radical substituent effect (i.e., its direction and magnitude) is the intrinsic polarity of the radical, and showed that the three basic types (S, O and O) of radical substituent effects are actually interconvertible by tuning their polarities. This is the currently most comprehensive description of substituent influence in radical theories. Because most radicals in living bodies are polar and most polar radicals do not behave like the Stype substituent effect as previously reported, Chengs study on radicals should be of special significance to the studies of bioradicals.

3Established a convenient method for experimental determination of homolytic RH bond dissociation energies in solution. The BDE method that Prof. Cheng developed is based on a properly designed thermodynamic cycle that uses the readily accessible solution parameters like pKas and electrochemical data. His method successfully avoided the use of the complicated gasphase instrumentations and tremendously shortened the time for each measurement without sacrificing precision. This method is especially suitable for measuring BDEs of extensively delocalized organic molecules that were otherwise extremely difficult to achieve by the gas phase methods. Thus it largely enhanced the potential of BDE data in solving chemical problems. By the same principle, Prof. Cheng and coworkers also developed methodologies for the measurements of homolytic and heterolytic bond cleavage energies of the CC, CX (X=H, O, N, S, halogen, metal, etc.) bonds for either neutral molecules or their radical ions. The methods that Cheng and coworkers developed now become the commonly used experimental methods for solutionphase bond energy determination.

4Established the first energy criterion for judging hydride transfer mechanisms of the NADH models. NADH is a very important redox coenzyme that has drawn tremendous attention in the fields of biology. However, the explanation on its hydride transfer mechanism has long been a hot controversy and the diversified discussions have already lasted for over 20 years without a sign of merging. The focus is on whether the hydride ion is transferred by a direct onestep mechanism or by a multistep mechanism as initiated by one electron transfer. Through a systematic study on free energy changes of each elementary steps involved in all the possible mechanisms and by a thorough energetic analysis, Cheng was able to establish a general energetic criterion to judge the NADH reaction mechanism. They demonstrated that it is the differentiation of electrondonating properties of different NADH models and electronpulling properties of various hydride receptors that caused the apparent differences in the hydride transfer mechanisms. The energetic criterion was determined to be 1.0 eV. They pointed out that if the energy gap between the NADH model and a receptor is well below 1 V, the hydride transfer reaction will follow an electrontransferinitiated multistep mechanism, if well above 1.0 V, it will proceed by a direct one step mechanism, and if around 1.0 V, a hybrid mechanism will occur. So, one may “tune” the mechanism from one to another by gradually increase or decrease the energy gaps between the two reactants via structural modification. This research unmasked the common explanation for the existence of different hydride transfer mechanisms and deepened understanding of the biological processes of NADH in molecular level.

Professor Cheng has also done some work on “green” synthesis in recent years and achieved a number of important progresses.

Cheng and coworkers have published over 140 papers in peerreviewed scientific journals, among those over 40 are in the two top chemistry journals JACS and JOC. His papers are widely cited in the literature and books. As a part of the outcomes of his teaching work on higher education, over 40 Ph.D and M.Sc. students of the Chengs group received their degrees.