International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 45 (2002) 1377–1378
www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhmt

Professor Bu-Xuan Wang, Chinese Academician,on his 80th birthday

Professor Bu-Xuan Wang, Chinese Academician andprofessor of the Thermal Engineering Department ofTsinghua University, Beijing, China, celebrates his 80thbirthday this year. It gives us great pleasure on thisoccasion to oﬀer our sincere congratulations on hiswide-ranging, life-long contributions to the developmentof the heat and mass transfer ﬁeld both within Chinaand throughout the world.
Professor Wang was born on 5 February 1922 in
Jiangsu Province, China. He received his B.S. degreefrom Tsinghua University in 1943 and his M.S. degreefrom Purdue University (USA) in 1949, both in me-PII: S 0 0 1 7 - 9 3 1 0 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 2 5 9 - 9chanical engineering. He joined Beijing University in1950 and became an associate professor in 1951. He
returned to Tsinghua University in 1952 and was appointed full professor in 1961. In 1980, he was elected an
Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, thehighest honor awarded to scientists in China.
Professor Wang has been an inﬂuential educator ofthermal engineering in China. He established theTeaching and Research Group on Thermodynamics
and Heat Transfer in Tsinghua University in 1952, andhas facilitated its growth over the years. He initiated or promoted such diverse ﬁelds as Engineering

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Thermophysics, Solar Energy, and Thermophysical
Properties of matter in China. He wrote 8 textbooks
related to thermodynamics, heat transfer, and thermalengineering.
Professor Wang’s research activities have covered awide range of topics, including heat transfer with/without phase change, heat and mass transfer in porous
media, thermophysical properties of matter, measurement techniques, biomedical heat transfer, energy
planning and solar energy utilization. His most signiﬁcant contributions have been in the areas of ﬁlm boilingheat transfer in subcooled liquids ﬂowing at highvelocities and the simultaneous heat and moisturetransfer in unsaturated and saturated porous media. His
basic research on the ﬁlm boiling of subcooled liquid
ﬂow and on the evaporation of liquid drops from 1981
to 1987 won the 4th National Natural Science Prize in1989, the most prestigious Chinese award in naturalscience.
While the generation of new knowledge is central toProfessor Wang’s research, he has also undertaken industrial projects prompted by national needs. From
1963 to 1966, he led a research team seeking to improve
the synthesis of ammonia in a large Chinese plant byenhancing the heat transmission and minimizing theenergy loss to provide a better temperature distribution
in the catalyst. The eﬀorts resulted in doubling the daily
production. During the 1970s, he conducted studies toﬁnd a way to protect the frozen soil from melting underrailbeds due to strong sunshine in the Qinghai Plateau sothat the trucks could run rationally all around the year.
Professor Wang has supervised many of graduate
students since the national degree system was establishedin 1981. He authored or coauthored over 300 scientiﬁcpapers and more than 100 referred papers published injust the past decade. He continues to be actively involved advising graduate students, and submitting research proposals. He gladly talks with any graduate
student and attends all the thesis defenses in the ThermalEngineering Research Group. He has chaired ﬁve international heat transfer conferences held every four
years in Beijing to further promote the international
exchange of information in heat transfer and is a contributing editor to numerous international and domestic
scientiﬁc journals. He served on many governmental andprofessional committees and has received many
prestigious national and international awards.
On behalf of Professor Wang’s students, colleagues
and friends from all over the world, we wish him many
more years of happiness, good health and continuedsuccess.
X.F. Peng
Department of Thermal Engineering
Tsinghua University
Beijing 100084
People’s Republic of China
Email address: pxf-dte@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn
Z.Y. Guo
J.P. Hartnett
W.J. Minkowycz
S. Sidemann
K.T. Yang
S.M. Yang
W.J. Yang