Tan Jiazhen

Tan Jiazhen (Simplified Chinese:谈家桢; Traditional Chinese:談傢楨; pinyin:Tán Jiāzhēn; Wade-Giles:T'an Chia-chen; b. September 15, 1909), or C. C. Tan, is a famous Chinese geneticist. Academician of Chinese Academy of Science.

Biography

He did his undergraduate work at Soochow University and received a PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1937 under the supervision of Theodosius Dobzhansky. Thomas Hunt Morgan and Alfred Henry Sturtevant also were his teachers. He later 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. In spite of interruptions by Lysenkoism and by the Cultural Revolution, Tan is still scientifically active in China."

Foreign member of United States National Academy of Sciences

A review by Professor James Crow of the life and work of C C Tan can be found at [ [http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/164/1/1] A remarkable man as well as a remarkable scientist he is still active at this writing at 99. Professor Crow has listed many of the honors accorded to Tan after the end of the Cultural Revolution. His career at Fudan University may be found at http://life.fudan.edu.cn/english/cctan.asp.