Chen Jia’er
Chen Jia’er—Famous physicist, professor of Department of Technological Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, former president of Peking University
Research field: accelerator and relative fields
In 1954, Chen Jia’er graduated from the Physics Department of Northeast People’s University (currently Jilin University). From 1963 through 1966, he acted as a visiting scholar at University of Oxford and Rutherford High Energy Laboratory. In 1972, he began his research on helical waveguide accelerator. In particular, he researched the features leading to the dynamic instability of helix from a theoretical perspective, and solved problems ranging from structure to stable operation through developing short helical coupling structure with higher strength and adjusting load factors. Thus he built the first usable prototype of helical waveguide accelerator.
From 1982 through 1984, he acted as a visiting scientist at the nuclear physics laboratory of Stony Brook University and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. During this period, he compressed the 64MeV carbon ion to 100 picoseconds, reaching a world top level. In 1984, he began to build RFQ, and completed the first 26MHz300 keV prototype in 1992, realizing the first acceleration of RFQ in China. On this basis, he built 1MeV RFQ, with a world-class efficiency of the radio frequency. In 1993, he was elected as academician of Academic Division of Mathematics and Physics, CAS. In the same year, he completed PKUAMS, the performance of which reached a world advanced level.
From August 1996 to December 1999, he was the president of Peking University. From December 1999 to December 2003, he was the president and party secretary of National Natural Science Foundation of China. Since 1999, he has received honorary doctor of science of Monroe College, Waseda University, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Loughborough University, etc., and has been elected as chartered physicist of Institute of Physics of the UK and academician of New York Academy of Sciences. In 2001, he was elected as academician of Third World Academy of Sciences.
He has been dedicated to the education and research on accelerator, and has made remarkable achievements in low energy accelerator and relative fields including China’s RF superconducting accelerator, ultrasensitive accelerator mass spectrometer, radio frequency quadrupole accelerator, high voltage electrostatic accelerator and beam physics.
