Zhou Peiyuan

Zhou Peiyuan (Chinese: 周培源; Wade–Giles: Chou P'ei-yüan; August 28, 1902 – November 24, 1993) was a Chinese theoretical physicist and politician. He served as president of Peking University, and was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).[1]

Zhou Peiyuan
周培源
Zhou Peiyuan with his wife in 1932
Born	August 28, 1902 Yixing, Jiangsu Province, Qing China
Died	November 24, 1993 (aged 91) Beijing Hospital, Beijing, China
Alma mater	California Institute of Technology(Ph.D.) University of Chicago Tsinghua University
Known for	Reynolds-averaged Navier Stokes equations
Spouse(s)	Wang Dicheng (王蒂澂)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Institutions	Peking University Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich University of Leipzig Institute for Advanced Study

Bronze bust of Zhou Peiyuan at Department of Physics, Peking University

Born in Yixing, Jiangsu, China, Zhou graduated from Tsinghua University in 1924. Then he went to the United States and obtained a bachelor's degree from University of Chicago in Spring of 1926, and a master's degree at the end of the same year. In 1928, he obtained his doctorate degree from California Institute of Technology under Eric Temple Bell with thesis The Gravitational Field of a Body with Rotational Symmetry in Einstein's Theory of Gravitation.[2] In 1936, he studied general relativity under Albert Einstein in the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.[1] He did his post-doc researches in quantum mechanics at University of Leipzig in Germany and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. He was a professor of physics at Peking University, and later served as the president of the University. He was elected as a founding member of CAS in 1955.

Tsinghua University's Zhou Pei-Yuan Center for Applied Mathematics is named in his honor.[3] In 2003, a bronze statue of Zhou was unveiled on the campus of Peking University.

Zhou's most famous work is the transport equation of Reynolds stress.[4]

References

1. "Zhou Peiyuan Is Dead – Educator-Scientist, 91". NY Times. 25 November 1993.
2. P'ei Yuan Chou at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
3. Pei-Yuan Center for Applied Mathematics, Tsinghua University Archived September 25, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
4. P. Y. Chou (1945). "On velocity correlations and the solutions of the equations of turbulent fluctuation". Quart. Appl. Math. 3: 38–54. doi:10.1090/qam/11999.