Biography
Zhang Jiaxiang, astronomer, was born in Oct. 1932 in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. In 1951, he first joined the Purple Mountain Observatory as a technician, supervised by director Zhang Yuzhe.
In 1957, Zhang Yuzhe and Zhang Jiaxiang worked together and published a paper discussing the orbit of artificial satellite. From 1965 to 1972, Prof. Zhang led a research group to accomplish the project of orbit determination of the first Chinese artificial satellite and thereafter the systematic studies of the orbit of Chinese synchronous satellite. In total, they have discovered more than 150 internationally numbered new minor planets and four comets. In the 1990s, he accurately predicted a series of collision times between 19 comet nuclei and Jupiter, based on his self-established numerical model of the solar system dynamics. In the most recent 10 years, he was named as the chief scientist, leading a project of “Construction of Near Earth Object Telescope，” which has been successfully completed.
To recognize his contribution in his field, Harvard Smithsonian Observatory in Boston named an asteroid they discovered “Jiaxiang” in 1991.
Read more about this topic: Zhang Jiaxiang
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)