Nationality Chinese Died 4 March 2003 | Fields Material Engineering Field Materials Science | |
Institutions Institute of Semiconductor CAS Alma mater Fukien Christian University, bachelor's degree in Physics
Dickinson College, bachelor's degree in Mathematics
University of Pennsylvania, master's degree in Solid-state Physics, doctorate degree in Solid-state Physics Known for first mono-crystalline silicon and gallium arsenide in China Notable awards CAS S&T Progress Award
Henry Fok Award | ||
Lanying Lin (林兰英) (February 7, 1918 – March 4, 2003), was a Chinese scientist in the material engineering field. She was born in Putian City, Fujian Province, which is at the southern part of China. She is called the Mother of Aerospace Materials and the Mother of Semiconductor Materials in China. She was born into a prestigious family, which was deeply influenced by the thought that women did not need to get an education. Because her gender, she was not allowed to go to primary school. But she fought against her family and got a chance to get an education. She graduated from Fukien Christian University, and earned the bachelor's degree in Physics. At the age of 30, she went to Dickinson College and earned another bachelor's degree in Mathematics. In 1955, she received the doctorate degree in Solid-state physics at the University of Pennsylvania, and became the first Chinese in a hundred years who earned the doctorate degree from this university. In 1957, she came back to China and was assigned to be a researcher at the Institute of Physics CAS. She then moved to Institute of Semiconductor CAS and spent all her research life in this institution.
Contents
- Family history
- Early life and education in China
- Education experience in America
- Early work experience in America
- Later life in China
- Opinions about gender issues
- Family members
- Qichang Guan and Cheng Lin
- Attributions and honors
- Social activities
- Political Activities
- Selected publications
- References
During her lifetime, she made a lot of attributions to her field. With her research mates, she made the first monocrystalline silicon in China, and then made the first mono-crystal furnace which is used to extract silicon in China. She laid the foundation of the development in Microelectronics and Optoelectronics. She was also responsible for developing extensive materials in high-purified vapor phase and liquid phase, and led China be the leader of the world in this field. She was honored as Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences and became the vice president of China Association for Science and Technology. She had gotten the prize in National S&T Progress Award two times, and had gotten the first prize in CAS S&T Progress Award four times. In 1998, she was awarded the Henry Fok Achievement Award for her accomplishments. In the political field, she had been selected as a member in Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and a deputy to the National People's Congress.
Family history
Lanying Lin was born into a big and prestigious family, which could be traced back to the Ming dynasty 600 years ago. Run Ling, the ancestor of Lanying Lin, was an imperial censor during the Ming Dynasty. Imperial censor is an official position that controls and supervises other government officials. During his work time, he faced two powerful people who broke many laws. He helped the emperor conquer the two contenders to power, so the emperor gave him money to build a magnificent house in Putian, which is now called the Old House of Run Ling. The ancestors of Lanying Lin and Lanying Lin herself were all born and raised in this house. Because of Run Ling, the family of Lanying Lin can be considered to be nobles.
Early life and education in China
In ancient China, women were under-appreciated. This opinion was deeply rooted in the mind of Lanying’s family. Compared with her little sisters, she was quite lucky because she was the first baby. All of her sisters were sent to be child brides or killed. She was often mistreated and was not allowed to get an education. Before she was 6 years old, Lanying was required to wash all the clothes and cook for whole family. At age of six, she wanted to go to school because she wanted to escape the traditional pattern for women at her time, which was doing housework and chatting with other women all day. The only way to do was to get an education. However, her mother, who was deeply influenced by gender schema from society and controlled her life, did not allow that. So Lanying locked herself in her room and swore that she would not eat if she was not allowed to go to school. Her mother was moved by her insistence, so she finally got the chance to get an education.
Her first period of education was at Liqing primary school. This school was one of several schools which accepted female students in Putian. Lanying Lin studied very hard at this primary school and often got the best grade in the class. But she was still required to do all the washing and cooking. As soon as she went back home, she started doing housework. At night, after finishing all her housework, she finally began studying and slept after 12 a.m. every day. And at six in the morning, she got up to cook and then went to school. At the age of six, she could only sleep six hours a day and this continued for her whole life.
She then studied at Liqing middle school. However, her mother still did not change her mind---she did not allow Lanying to study in middle school. She said that middle school was provided for males, and as a female, literacy did not matter. Lanying fought with her mother and finally compromised that if she did not need any money to study, her mother would accept. This middle school provided the scholarship for students who got the three best grades in each semester. Because of this, Lanying Lin got the scholarship every semester and finished her studies successfully.
After finishing the work in middle school, she went to Putian high school. At this time, her mother finally accepted her studies because of her brilliant work in middle school and was happy with her accomplishments.However, she stayed in this school for only 1 year because of society’s situation. At that period, Japan started some small wars with China and killed many Chinese. A lot of students in this school were angry about that and held many parades to boycott Japan. But a lot of Japanese soldiers and spies stayed in China, so the parades were suppressed and some students were killed. Because of this, the study could not continue. So Lanying Lin transferred after one year in high school to a women’s school called Hami Lton School, which was founded by an American. One of her teachers came from American and could not speak Chinese very well, so many of her classmates could not understand his courses. Lanying helped the teacher as an assistant. So every time the teacher taught something in English, Lanying Lin would help to teach in Chinese. Because of this, she was called ‘little teacher’ by her classmates.
She continued her study at the Fukien Christian University, which was a top university at that time in China. She graduated at the age of 22 from this university and earned the bachelor's degree in Physics. Because she was the best one in her class and this university wanted to hire some women, she got the chance to stay in this university and work for 8 years. For the first four years, she worked as an assistant to teach some fundamental courses such as mechanism. She taught so well that many students who were not in this class wanted to listen to her courses. After that she wrote a book named Course for Experiments in Optics and got the certification as a professor. Fukien Christian University had many exchange programs with New York University at that time and many teachers who worked more than 2 years could get the chance to study abroad. However, because she was not a Christian, the person in charge of this program didn’t give her the chance. So she applied for Dickinson College and got a full scholarship by the help of her workmate named Lairong Li.
Education experience in America
In 1949 at the age of 31, she graduated from Dickinson College with another bachelor's degree in math after studying for one year. She received the Golden Key Award. This was a key to all the academic seminars in America and was given to students who worked excellently for four years. Her math professor gave her a chance to continue her studies in the University of Chicago in math department. However, she studied solid state physics at the University of Pennsylvania. She thought that compared with math, physics was more applicable and more useful for China at that period. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955 at the age of 37 with the doctorate in solid state physics, becoming the first Chinese to earn a doctorate degree from this university.
Early work experience in America
Lanying wanted to come back to China after graduation. However, the political situation was not good. At that time, America needed a lot of scientists and wanted to keep international students. Many Chinese students were not allowed to go back home. Because of this situation, she decided to work in America for some time and learn more things and use them to develop her homeland in the future. By the recommendation of her professor in University of Pennsylvania, she decided to work as a senior engineer at the Sylvania Company which mainly worked for semiconductors. At that time, the company had failed many times in making mono-crystalline silicon. Lanying found out the problems and helped the company successfully making the silicon.
Later life in China
After 1 year of working in America, when China made a treaty with America in Geneva Conference in 1956 regarding the international students, Lanying finally could come back to her homeland. At January 6, 1957, she boarded on the ship and began the trip to China after 8 years staying away from her homeland. Before boarded on the ship, the FBI came to her and withheld her salary for the whole year, 6800 dollars, in order to persuade her to stay in America. She gave up this money and went on the ship.
Because of the money she gave up, her family stayed poor because her salary was only 207 RMB, which was equal to 20 dollars a month. And her research and work place was very poor. However, she never gave up. After coming back to China, she began working as soon as possible. In 1957, her workplace-Institute of Semiconductor CAS—finished making the first mono-crystalline germanium in China. By virtue of the working experience in Sylvania Company, she knew all the processes in making the mono-crystalline silicon. However she could not get any equipment because of embargoes from other countries. So she changed the process and made the first mono-crystalline silicon in China in 1958. China became the third country to make mono-crystalline silicon by itself. In 1962, she designed the mono-crystal furnace. This furnace had been merchandized to many countries. In the same year, she made the first mono-crystalline gallium arsenide in China. Lanying Lin’s gallium arsenide reached the highest mobility at that time in the whole world.
However, the Cultural Revolution came. From 1966-1976, billions of people in China suffered from it. All educators and scientists were suppressed. Lanying Lin was not allowed to do any research and had to stay in her room under the monitoring of others. Lanying Lin’s father, a great educator, died when he was assaulted by many young people.
Although Lanying was sorrowful about her father’s death, she began working at the age of 60 after the Culture Revolution. She found that the dislocation density of existing gallium arsenide was very large due to gravity and not good enough to use, so she decided to make the experiment in artificial satellites. This was a dangerous experiment because the melting point of gallium arsenide is 1238 Celsius degrees. However, she finished successfully and became the first person in the world who had made this experiment successfully. Because of this work in gallium arsenide, the government in China named a gallium arsenide company(Chinese: 中科稼英) after her in 2001. This company has been in business for over than 10 years.
At age of 78, in 1996, she was diagnosed with cancer. She had been working on building the semiconductor base in the southern part of China. When she was diagnosed, she asked, “Can someone give me another ten years? In ten years, I can definitely finish what I am doing and I can die with no regrets!” She wanted ten years to offset the ten years wasted in the Culture Revolution. At 1:00 p.m. on March 4, 2003, Lanying died.
Opinions about gender issues
Throughout Lanying’s life, she faced a lot more difficulties because she was a female. So after she came back from America, she joined the All-China Women's Federation. She held a lot of conferences and talked about the gender issues. As a woman, she never believed gender schema and always fought for herself. She believed that in the science field, women and men are equal, and that the reason why women are fewer in this field is because women are more easily distracted by other things such as gossip, so women have to memorize more unrelated things and cannot focus on work.
Family members
There were more than 20 people in Lanying’s family. But in her life, her mother and father influenced her most. Jianhua Lin, Lanying’s father, was a great educator. When Lanying was young, he stayed far from home and studied at the university. Although he did not stay with Lanying, he often wrote letters to Lanying and bought some books for her. So it was Jianhua that led Lanying into studying. Lanying’s mother was Shuixian Zhou. She was a very tough woman because she had to hold the whole family. Because of her personality, Lanying learned from her and became persistent. Although Shuixian was deeply influenced by the gender schema, she helped Lanying to be a persistent person, so Lanying could conquer many difficulties in her life. Lanying had two brothers. After she came back from America, she helped raise two nieces because she had no child.
Qichang Guan and Cheng Lin
Lanying did not marry, but she loved two men. The first one was Qichang Guan. Lanying and Qichang were in different classes of the same middle school. After graduation from middle school, Qichang went to another city with his parents, so they separated. But they continued their relationship by mail. Lanying and Qichang had different dreams about future. Qichang told Lanying that he wanted to marry her in the future and they could work as teachers in a middle school. However, Lanying was more ambitious. So when time went by, they stopped writing to each other. At the age of 17, Qichang died due to leukemia.
Another man she loved was Cheng Lin. They met each other at Fukien Christian University. They had the same interests and both were ambitious. After graduation, they both stayed at this university and worked as teachers. However, because Lanying wanted to learn more things and decided to go to America, they separated. Cheng Lin got married after she went to America. Their story has been written as a novel named The Second Handshake.