AWARDEE OF PHYSICS PRIZE

HE XIANTU

Abstract

He Xiantu was born in September 1937 in Zhenhai, Zhejiang Province, theoretical physicist.  graduated from the Department of Physics, Zhejiang University, in 1962. Research professor, supervisor for Ph.D. student, and the former deputy director of Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics (IAPCM) in Beijing. Now he is chief scientist of National 863 Hi-Tech Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) Project and chief scientist of IAPCM; Member of Expert Committee of Nonlinear Science, Major State Basic Research. He made important contributions to theoretical research on physics of nuclear weapons. Under his lead, Chinese scientists have laid a sound foundation for ICF research. He himself proposed and studied an ICF model in which the local thermal equilibrium (LTE) ignition at lower temperature evolves automatically to non-LTE burn, and he with his coworkers in China first observed the thermonuclear neutron yield for laser-drive ICF. In the field of plasma physics, he first obtained an exact expression for spontaneously magnetic field generated from electromagnetic wave interaction; and first derived the cubic-quintic Schrodinger equation and its solitary wave solution. And he also achieved many original fruits, such as found mechanism for solitary waves to accelerate particles, coherent turbulence with small-scale correlation in plasma, etc. In the field of nonlinear science, he took the lead in doing research work on pattern dynamics and spatiotemporal chaos in near integrable Hamiltonian system, explored the correlation between them, and found a new route from pattern dynamics evolving to spatiotemporal chaos. He was awarded the Second Prize of National Nature Science, the First and Second Prizes of National Science and Technology Advances, and other Ministry Prizes etc. He was elected Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1995.