In his speech to mark the occasion, Xi stressed the need for more urgency in pushing forward scientific technology innovation so that China can “seize the upper ground”.
“There are still gaps [and] weaknesses,” Xi said, calling for increasing “national strategic scientific and technological strength” to support “basic research while encouraging free exploration”.
Li, 85, received the award “for his expert knowledge of the basic technology of advanced global positioning and mapping through satellite remote sensing”, according to China’s state news agency. Xinhua.
One of Li’s greatest achievements was the design of ZY-3, the first civilian high-resolution mapping satellite, which produced 1:50,000 orthophotos. An orthophoto is an aerial photograph from which distortions caused by terrain and camera orientation have been removed so that it can be read in the same way as a map.
Xue was honored for “opening up a new direction of research in high temperature conditions”, Xinhua said. The 61-year-old is a world-leading researcher in the physics of condensed matter, particularly superconductors, a type of material that exists in a recently discovered state of quantum matter.
Because its interior insulates while its surface conducts electricity without losing heat, the topological insulator is ideal for future electrical efficiency. In 2013, Xue’s team was the first to report an experimental study of biological insulation, beating competitors in Japan, Germany and the United States.
The honor received by Li and Xue was part of China’s annual National Science and Technology Awards. It has four other categories: for natural science, technological innovation, scientific and technological development and international cooperation of science and technology.
The State Prize for Science and Technology is the most prestigious of the five, and no more than two winners are recognized for outstanding achievements and significant contributions to society. Each receives 5 million yuan (about 700,000 US dollars) as prize money.
Tu Youyou, co-winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and agronomist Yuan Longping, known as the “father of hybrid rice”, are previous recipients of the grand prize.
Li graduated in 1963 from the Wuhan Institute of Surveying and Mapping, which later became the School of Geodesy and Geomatics at Wuhan University. After later obtaining a master’s degree, he went to Germany for further studies in 1982 and began his PhD in 1983 at the University of Stuttgart. Two years later and with a doctorate, he returned to China.
In 2022, Li became the first Chinese scientist to receive the Brock gold medal. Established in 1952 by the American Society for Photographic and Remote Sensing, the Brock Gold Medal is one of the most influential awards in society and is presented to one scientist every four years.
For Xue, born into a rural family in Shandong province, life as a student was full of turmoil in the early days. He failed the graduate entrance examination twice before being admitted to the Institute of Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1987.
His PhD was a joint Chinese-Japanese program and, while studying in Japan at Tohoku University, he had to learn Japanese while working 16 hours a day, six days a week in a laboratory.
“It was very challenging, but I managed to complete a very important experiment the following year, which changed a lot in my career,” Xue told Chinese state broadcaster CCTV in 2018.
After working as a research fellow at Tohoku University for five years, including one year as a visiting scholar at North Carolina State University in the United States, Xue returned to China in 1999 and joined the Institute of Physics, CAS. He has been a distinguished professor at Tsinghua University since 2005.
Other National Science and Technology Awards have also been announced today, with a total of 250 projects among the winners.
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Underwater robots maintain China’s first submersible oil platform
Underwater robots maintain China’s first submersible oil platform
First prize in the State Natural Science Award category also went to geological research. A group of physicists at CAS won a top prize for innovations in calculating and predicting the topological properties of materials, an advance that could make the search for such materials much easier.
Eight projects took first prize in the State Technological Innovation Award. These included one related to an important technology in the semiconductor industry – a chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP) machine for integrated circuits developed by a team from Tsinghua University.
Another winner in the category was an innovation to prevent and control groundwater pollution in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.
The development award also recognizes technological advances in areas such as energy, communications and the environment, including the development of offshore wind energy and high performance membrane lithium-ion batteries.
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