The Chronicle of Wang Zhenru:In Memory of the 100th Anniversary of Prof. Wang Zhenru's Birth

As a senior professor of Beijing Forestry University, Mr. WANG Zhen-ru is not only a famous forestry educationalist, botanist and tree physiologist in China, but also a pioneer and founder of tree physiology in China, and has profound attainments in the field of tree physiology and forest ecology. As one of the founders of Beijing Forestry University, Prof. Wang enjoys a high academic reputation and is esteemed by several generations of Beijing Forestry University people. He died at the age of 101 and witnessed the unsmooth development of China's forestry sciences from the early modern times to the modern era in the course of a century. At the same time, his life is accompanied by almost all the development events of Beijing Forestry University from nothing, from the hard pioneering work at the very beginning to the outward migration, dissolution, and to the re-establishment and embracing the 21th century. He has made tremendous contributions to the development of Beijing Forestry University as well as its academic status in the world. In a word, Prof. Wang's life is an epitome of modern and contemporary history of China's forestry science development. Therefore, an overall summary of Prof. Wang's life experience, especially his important events in forestry science research and education, is of great value to the study of China's forestry development history. He was born in Beijing in 1908 and graduated from the Department of Biology of Tsinghua University in 1929, as one of the first graduates of this university. Then he worked one after another for the Biological Institute of the Science Society of China, Tsinghua University and Guangxi University. He successfully applied to a US college and went there in 1935. Afterwards, he received the Master's degree of forestry science from Cornell University in 1936 and Ph. D from Duke University in 1939, and returned to China in 1939. Since then, he had been engaged in teaching and scientific research in universities. He served ever as a professor in the Agricultural College of Guangxi University, the Agricultural College of Peking University, Beijing Agricultural University, and Beijing Forestry University. He wrote The Lecture on Plant Physiology which is the first textbook suitable for forestry major in China. He is proficient in English, German, Russian, Japanese, and Latin languages, and compiled and examined German-Chinese Forestry Terms, English-Chinese Forestry Science and Technology Dictionary, Japanese-Chinese Forestry Science and Technology Dictionary and Forestry Terms and translated influential works on plant physiology such as Tree Physiology and Woody Plant Physiology. As the first group of doctoral advisors of forestry science, he tutored China's first Ph. D student of forestry science as He Ping. He took the position as chief editor of Journal of Botany, the first chief editor of Journal of Biology, Journal of Beijing Forestry College, Forest and Human and the deputy chief editor of Scientia Silvae Sinicae. WANG Zhenru has high academic prestige in the fields of forestry, forest ecology and plant physiology in China. For one century, he witnessed the great changes in the Republic of China (1912—1949) to the People's Republic of China, the development of China's botany, tree physiology and forest ecology, as well as the development of China's higher education of forestry.