Zhai Zhonghe


Zhai Zhonghe was a Chinese cell biologist, and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He was a member of the Chinese Communist Party.

Biography

Zhai was born in Liyang County, Jiangsu, on 18 August 1930. His mother died when he was 8, and he was raised by his paternal grandmother. He secondary studied at Jiangsu Provincial Liyang High School. In 1950, he was admitted to Tsinghua University, where he majored in biology. A year later, he was sent to study at the University of Leningrad on government scholarships.
Zhai returned to China in 1956 and that same year became a professor at the Department of Biology, Peking University. In 1959, he pursued advanced studies at the Institute of Biophysics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He returned to China in 1961 and continued to teach at Peking University. In 1969, during the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to the May Seventh Cadre Schools to do farm work in the suburb of Nanchang, Jiangxi, and returned to Peking University in 1973. He was a visiting scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1985 to 1986, studying nuclear skeleton and its relationship with gene expression under the supervision of S. Penman.
Zhai died in Beijing on 10 February 2023, at the age of 92.

Honours and awards