Liang Dongcai


Liang Dongcai was a Chinese molecular biophysicist, politician and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Liang was an alternate member of the 12th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and a member of the 13th and 14th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party.

Early life and career

Liang was born into a poor family in Nanhai County, Guangdong, on 29 May 1932. He was the sixth of nine children. Two of the nine children in the family died prematurely due to poverty.
He attended Guangzhou No. 1 High School. In 1951, he enrolled at Sun Yat-sen University, majoring in chemistry. After university in 1956, he was sent to study at the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union on government scholarships, where he earned his vice-doctorate degree in 1960.
In April 1960, after returning to China, Liang and the scientific researchers of the Institute of Computing Technology started the research on the calculation program. On the basis of the 104-electron tube computer built by China, he established the first set of calculation program for small molecule structure analysis, and successfully determined the crystal structure of a batch of organic compounds by using the program, which has laid an important foundation for the development of single crystal structure analysis of small molecules and the study of crystal structure of biological macromolecules in China.
At the end of 1965, the Chinese Academy of Sciences sent Liang to study in the United Kingdom, becoming the first researcher in China to contact and enter the field of X-ray crystallography. He first studied at the Royal Institution, and then transferred to Oxford University to study with Dorothy Hodgkin, a famous crystallographer and Nobel Prize-winner.
Liang returned to China in early 1967, with the support of Marshal Nie Rongzhen and other researchers, he set up the Beijing Insulin Crystal Structure Research Collaboration Group. At the end of 1969, he successfully solved the high-resolution structure of insulin and completed the determination of the crystal structure of porcine insulin with a resolution of 2.5 angstroms, making China officially enter the ranks of international X-ray crystallography.
In 1983, he became director of the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and served until 1986, when he was appointed deputy director of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. In 1989, he co-founded the State Key Laboratory of biomacromolecules with Chen-Lu Tsou and Yang Fuyu, and served as its deputy director.

Personal life and death

Liang had two sons. He died on 18 January 2026, at the age of 93.

Honours and awards