Zheng Ji

Zheng Ji (1935)

Zheng Ji ( Chinese郑 集; born May 6, 1900 in Liujiachang, Nanxi District , Sichuan ; † July 29, 2010 in Nanjing , Jiangsu ) was a Chinese nutritionist and biochemist . In China, he is considered the founder of modern Chinese nutritional science and a pioneer in the field of biochemistry.

life and work

Zheng came from a poor farming family. He worked as a shepherd boy and was only able to attend elementary school at the age of 14, which he completed at the age of 17. Due to his poverty, he could not attend middle school and continued his self- education . After a friend had collected money to help him, he hiked seven days to Chengdu , where he passed the entrance exam for the teacher training college in 1921, but had to drop out due to illness. In a second attempt in 1924 he passed the entrance examination for the biology faculty of the renowned National Southeastern University, later the National Central University and today's Nanjing University . In 1928 he completed his studies in biology and chemistry with a bachelor's degree and worked as an assistant at the agricultural science faculty. In 1930 he received a state scholarship to continue his studies in the USA. There, he specialized in biochemistry and nutritional sciences and studied at the Ohio State University ( MA 1931), the University of Chicago , of Yale University and Indiana University , where he in 1934 with a thesis on the protein chemistry of soybean for Ph.D. PhD .

After returning to his home country, he worked first as a research fellow at the Chinese Scientific Research Institute and then as a professor at the Medical Faculty of Nanjing University, which opened in 1935, where he set up the Department of Biochemistry. In 1945, he established the Biochemistry Research Institute at Nanjing University, China's first official biochemical research facility. As a professor of biochemistry and director of the Institute for Biochemical Teaching and Research at the Medical Faculty of Nanjing University, he trained numerous well-known Chinese biochemists well into old age. In addition, he was professor of biochemistry at the Medical College of the 2nd Army of the People's Liberation Army from 1950 and from 1956 professor at the Army Medical College No. 4 in Xi'an . In addition to his teaching activities, he published seven scientific monographs and 56 scientific articles. A particular concern of Zheng was to improve the nutritional situation of the population through the dissemination of nutritional knowledge. He also wrote numerous popular science articles and gave lectures on the radio.

During the Sino-Japanese War , the medical school was temporarily relocated to Chengdu. There Zheng founded the "Scientific Society for Biochemistry Chengdu", the first scientific association for biochemistry in China. He later helped found the Chinese Nutritional Society, of which he became the first chairman, and the Biochemical Society.

During the Chinese Civil War in 1949 he was a member of the university management and was able to prevent the Kuomintang's plan to relocate Nanjing University to the south of the country. During the Cultural Revolution in 1972, he was interrogated several times and was under arrest for 13 months.

After his 70th birthday, he began to study the biochemistry of aging processes . He studied more than a hundred healthy old people over 70 and proposed a theory that the cause of aging is cell metabolism disorders that are exacerbated by harmful environmental factors and an unhealthy lifestyle. He became the founder of geriatric biochemistry in China. He also wrote popular science books and articles on this subject.

At the age of 74, Zheng, who in addition to Chinese also spoke English, French, German and Russian, began to learn Japanese. He learned Korean at the age of 90 and gave two lectures at the World Gerontology Congress in Pyongyang .

Between the ages of 80 and 90, Zheng won several prizes, including his textbook "General Biochemistry" and the essay "The Path to a Healthy Long Life". He continued to supervise doctoral students and, at the age of 98, published the third, considerably revised edition of his “General Biochemistry”. Until he was 100, he still worked at the university every day, making him the world's oldest active university professor. Zheng only gave up teaching after a fall and a subsequent lengthy hospital stay, but continued to publish until he was the last year of his life. In 2010 his book “Staying Healthy is the Best Doctor” was published, making him the world's oldest author. At the end of June 2010, when he was 111 years old, he and Zhu Hao Kang, a 19-year-old high school graduate from Nanjing, launched an appeal to the statesmen of the world to work for peace and harmonious development 130 (111 + 19) leading politicians should be sent. Zheng, who enjoyed complete mental clarity to the last, was admitted to the hospital in April 2010 because of age problems and died of complications from severe pneumonia . He left a son and two daughters.

Zheng, who lived very modestly his life, donated most of his fortune to academic societies and a relief fund for students in need.

Web links

• Article on the beginning of his 110th year of life (Chinese) ( Memento from June 5, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
• Zhao Yanchen: World's oldest professor turns 109 on CCTV.com (from: China Daily ) (English)
• Obituary with photos ( memento from February 13, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) at Xinhua (Chinese)