Xia Peisu

The Chinese computer scientist Xia Peisu in 1946 on the campus of the National Chiao Tung University in Chongqing

Xia Peisu ( Chinese  夏培 肃 ; born July 28, 1923 in Chongqing , China ; † August 27, 2014 in Beijing , China) was a Chinese computer scientist and university professor. She led the development of China's first domestic all-purpose electronic computer in 1958 and was named the "Mother of Computer Science in China". She wrote the first systematic computer science textbook in China.

life and work

Xia attended Nanyu Middle School in 1934 and was forced to graduate from National No. Attend Nine Middle School in Jiangjin . Then she went to Chongqing National Central University, which was renamed Nanjing University in 1949 . In 1940 she received her bachelor's degree in electrical engineering . In 1945 she was recommended for admission to the Telecommunication Research Institute at the Shanghai Branch School of Jiaotong University in Chongqing to continue her postgraduate studies. There she met her future husband, the physicist Yang Liming . In 1947 she went to Edinburgh University , received her doctorate in electrical engineering in 1950 and was then a postdoctoral fellow. Two years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, she returned to China with her husband in 1951 and accepted a position as an Associate Researcher in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University . In 1952 she was accepted into the first Chinese research team for electronic computers with Min Naida , who later moved to Germany, and the later atomic physicist Wang Chuanying , which initiated the development of computer technology in China. In 1956 she taught the first course in computer theory in China and wrote “Principles of the Electronic Computer”, the first systematic textbook for computer science in China. When the Chinese University of Science and Technology was founded in 1958, it was responsible for establishing the computer science department and in 1958 directed the design of the first general-purpose digital computer made in China. Her students included Guojie Li , who led the development of the Sugon supercomputers, and Weiwu Hu , the chief architect of the Loongson CPU. When Loongson introduced China's first specially developed CPU in 2002, Hu named it Xia-50 in her honor. XIA was the founder and editor-in-chief of the Chinese Journal of Computers, one of the most influential Chinese journals for computer science and technology, and the Journal of Computer Science and Technology, an English computer journal. In collaboration with XU Kongshi , she managed the editing of the English-Chinese computer dictionary. She was a member of the 5th and 6th sessions of the National People's Conference. In 1985 she received her PhD from Heriot-Watt University . In 1991 she was admitted to the Chinese Academy of Sciences and in 2010 she received the first Life Achievement Award from the China Computer Federation (CCF).

Memberships

• Academic Division of Information Technical Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

literature

• Wang Bing: "Xia Peisu"; In Lee, Lily Xiao Hong; Stefanowska, AD (eds.). Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women. New York, pp. 572-573, 2003, ISBN 978-0-7656-0798-0

Web links

• Xia Peisu: The Mother of Computer Science in China
• dissertation
• Short biography
• Obituary of Academician XIA Peisu (1923-2014)