At the awarding ceremony.
Five outstanding scientists from CAS were conferred a newly established life science award named after TAN Jiazhen (Tan Chia-Chen), a pioneer of Chinese genetics, in Shanghai on 19 December, 2008.
Prof. RAO Zihe, CAS Member and head of Nankai University, won the Achievement Prize of the TAN Jiazhen Awards for Life Sciences while Prof. GAO Fu with the CAS Institute of Microbiology, Profs. WANG Wen and XU Lin with the CAS Kunming Institute of Zoology and Prof. GE Baoxue with the CAS Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences shared the Innovation Prize of the Awards with other domestic researchers.
It is the first time that Tan Jiazhen Awards for Life Science, funded by the Shanghai-based United Gene Tec Co. and organized by Shanghai Biopharmaceutics Industry Association, was issued in China. According to the by-law of the Awards, they are established to honor and financially support distinguished scientists and professors, promising young scholars undertaking original researches as well as outstanding contributors to the industrialization of related research outcomes in the field of life science across the nation. There are two prizes for the award, namely the Achievement Prize and the Innovation Prize.
The annual prize for all awardees of the year is 1 million RMB (US$146,400). Each of the two laureates of the Achievement Prize will be granted about $36,600, while each one of the 10 laureates of the Innovation Prize about $7,320. The evaluation committee carries out final review in every August.
The 2008 awardees include two senior researchers for their devotion to and nine mid-aged or young scholars for their innovative work in life sciences in China.
Prof. Tan Jiazhen is recognized as one of the founders of China's genetic science. He received a PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1936 and taught at Columbia University. As part of the Morgan group in the 1930s, Tan helped make Drosophila pseudoobscura the leading species for evolutionary studies and did pioneering work in insect genetics. He was elected a CAS Member in 1980, Foreign Associate of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences and fellow of The Third World Academy of Sciences in 1985, Foreign Member of Academia National delle Scienze detta dei XL, Italy in 1987 and honorary life member of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1999. Just eight weeks ago, on November 1, 2008, Prof. Tan died of multiple organ dysfunction syndromes at the age of 100.
