USTC mourns Tsung-Dao Lee: Contributed to the establishment of the Junior Class and attached importance to the cultivation of basic scientific talents
2024-08-07
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Nobel Prize winner in Physics and Chinese-American physicist Tsung-Dao Lee died at his home in San Francisco, USA on August 4, 2024, local time, at the age of 97.
The Shanghai Research Institute of the University of Science and Technology of China published an article to mourn Li Zhengdao and recall his historical origins with the establishment of the Junior Class of USTC. The article introduced that on April 20, 1979, Li Zhengdao came to the campus of USTC Hefei for the first time and met the teachers and students of the Junior Class. At this time, five years had passed since he proposed that "science talents can also be selected and cultivated from an early age like literature and art and sports." Li Zhengdao was very concerned about the growth of these young people, put forward many suggestions, and wrote an inscription: "The youth is better than the master, and there are successors."
In 1979, Tsung-Dao Lee and his wife wrote an inscription for the junior class. Image courtesy of the WeChat official account of the Shanghai Research Institute of the University of Science and Technology of China, "Mozi Salon"
As early as 1972, when Li Zhengdao and his wife returned to China for the first time, they found that universities and research institutes at that time had a tendency to despise basic science, especially theoretical science, and pay attention to applied science. At the same time, there was a gap in the training of theoretical talents. However, due to limited communication time, he did not communicate these ideas with the central leadership. When he returned to China again in 1974, he saw ballet dancers in Shanghai training almost full-time, which provided inspiration for his proposal for talent training. Li Zhengdao thought: Are basic science talents not as good as ballet talents?
In May 1974, Tsung-Dao Lee proposed in his article “Suggestions on the Cultivation of Basic Science Talents”: “Science talents can also be cultivated from an early age, just like literature, art, and sports. We can refer to the method of recruiting and training ballet dancers, and select a very small number of teenagers around thirteen or fourteen years old who have the conditions for training from all over the country to go to university for training.” So the real meaning of this suggestion is that science talents can also be cultivated just like literature and art.
In this regard, an article published by the Shanghai Institute of USTC commented that today's report described the establishment of the junior class as an achievement "under the strong advocacy and enthusiastic support of Tsung-Dao Lee", and interpreted this suggestion as Tsung-Dao Lee's suggestion to create a junior class, which actually weakened Tsung-Dao Lee's good intentions to promote the development of Chinese physics. Tsung-Dao Lee later recalled: "The actual purpose of my suggestion was not to set up a junior class, but to break the situation of not paying attention to the cultivation of basic scientific talents and other types of talents, so that the cultivation of various types of talents across the country will be on the right track."
The entire proposal talks about the importance of basic science and how to cultivate basic talents, but in the end, it was this "small suggestion" that Li Zhengdao considered that was implemented and had the greatest impact. In fact, even the junior class was established by various coincidences.
At that time, Tsung-Dao Lee also suggested whether basic talent training could be carried out outside of universities. Therefore, in 1975, in order to implement Tsung-Dao Lee's plan, USTC prepared to establish a science middle school, but due to changes in the situation at the time, this plan was not completed. It was not until 1977 that the political situation changed and society's expectations for rapid talent training increased. A group of students were admitted to universities on an exceptional basis, but there were still some students who were too young to enter universities directly. USTC decided to open a preparatory class based on the model of a science middle school as a temporary solution for the placement of these students. On March 8, 1978, the preparatory class opened, and a few days before the start of school, the preparatory class was renamed the "Junior Class."
In 1984, Tsung-Dao Lee took a group photo with teachers and students of the USTC Junior Class. Image courtesy of the WeChat official account of USTC Shanghai Research Institute, "Mozi Salon"
After the establishment of the Junior Class, the media's publicity of the Junior Class caused a great sensation, which actually promoted the social recommendation of talents. Although the first batch of Junior Classes brought many new challenges to the teaching and management of USTC, some teachers even did not recommend continuing to open Junior Classes. Under such circumstances, USTC discussed the enrollment and training methods of the Junior Class and decided to implement the enrollment method of "College Entrance Examination Preliminary Examination + Reexamination + Oral Examination". In terms of training methods, students in the Junior Class will follow the standards and requirements of undergraduate education. Since then, the Junior Class of undergraduate nature has been established, and USTC has also pioneered independent enrollment.
The Shanghai Institute of USTC evaluated that Tsung-Dao Lee was involved in three works in the early 1980s: CUSPEA (China-U.S. Joint Physics Graduate Program), high energy physics, and the Junior Class. If these achievements changed the fate of a generation of elite intellectuals in China, then these three works have a particularly important significance in the history of Chinese physics.
Since then, the Junior Class has become a concern in Li Zhengdao's heart. In 2023, when it was the 45th anniversary of the establishment of the Junior Class of USTC, Li Zhengdao wrote the inscription: "Congratulations on the 45th anniversary of the Junior Class of USTC".
In 2023, Tsung-Dao Lee wrote an inscription for the Junior Class. Image from the official website of the University of Science and Technology of China
On May 22 this year, Li Zhongqing, son of Tsung-Dao Lee, was invited to give an academic report at the University of Science and Technology of China as the Yan Ai Foundation Chair Professor of Social Sciences at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, entitled "China's Second Silent Revolution: A Comparison of China's Top University Students and Top Academic Researchers from 1920 to 2020". The report was jointly organized by the School of Junior Classes, the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the Institute of Advanced Studies in Science, Technology and Humanities of USTC.
At the meeting, Shi Yunli, executive dean of USTC's School of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Institute of Science, Technology and Humanities, expressed sincere gratitude on behalf of the teachers and students present to Professor Li Zhongqing's father, Mr. Tsung-Dao Lee, for his outstanding contributions to the establishment of USTC's Junior Class and my country's education cause.
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences of USTC published an article introducing that in this lecture, Professor Li Zhongqing and his team, including his co-author Zuo You (a doctoral student at the School of History of Nanjing University), compared the social origins of my country's top scholars and elite students since modern times, examined the impact of factors such as geographical location, economics and politics on the growth of talents in my country, and showed everyone the distribution of social sources of my country's top talents from 1952 to 2022 in the form of charts. The study believes that after 1977, my country's top scholars came more from rural areas rather than cities, and the proportion of my country's top scholars and elite students from disadvantaged backgrounds is higher than that of other countries. The study uses detailed materials to prove that the second revolution in my country's education field provides reference for my country's higher education reform and talent training development, filling the gap in domestic research. In the lecture, Professor Li Zhongqing vividly demonstrated the positive role of my country's higher education system in social openness by interspersing interesting stories and historical materials in the research process.
The Paper reporter Wu Yi
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