60th Birthday: Chunli Bai

Professor Chunli Bai, President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, China, celebrates his 60th birthday on September 26. He is one of the pioneers in the field of scanning probe microscopy, nanoscience, and nanotechnology in China and through his leadership the Institute of Chemistry, CAS, has become well-known for research in these areas.

Bai studied chemistry at Peking University, graduating in 1978, and then obtained Master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the Institute of Chemistry, CAS, in 1981 and 1985, respectively. From 1985–1987, he carried out postdoctoral research in the field of physical chemistry at Californian Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasedena, USA. Bai returned to the Institute of Chemistry, CAS, in 1987, and has been associated with this institute ever since, becoming the Vice-President of CAS in 1996 and then President in 2011. Alongside his work at CAS he was also a founding director of the National Centre for Science and Technology, China, and has been closely associated with the work of Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (TWAS), Trieste, Italy, which is now called the World Academy of Sciences. He was Vice-President of this Academy for some time before becoming President earlier this year.

As an ambassador of Chinese science he has been a speaker at many international conferences and as well as being an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), UK, he is a member of a number of foreign academies including the US National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Danish Academy of Sciences, the German National Science Academy, and the Indian Academy of Sciences.

During the course of his career he has received more than twenty prestigious awards and prizes. These prizes include the UNESCO first medal “for contributions to the development of nanoscience and nanotechnology”, which he shares with Nobel Laureate Professor Zhores Ivanovich Alferov, the International Medal awarded by the Society of Chemical Industry, London, UK, and the 2002 Medal Lecture in chemical science from the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World in Chemical Sciences (TWAS).

He is interested in the development of new techniques and methods for use in molecular and material sciences and is particularly focused on the fields of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) and nanomaterials. Over the course of his career he has published more than 350 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals and authored several book chapters.

Bai is the member of the International Editorial Advisory Board of several journals including the Angewandte Chemie，Chemistry – An Asian Journal, Advanced Materials, Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Chemical Physics Letters.

As part of his birthday celebration, and as a tribute to Professor Bai’s illustrious career, Chemistry – An Asian Journal has published a special issue in honor of his birthday. The issue features a Guest Editorial by Professor C.N.R. Rao, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bangalore, India, who has also contributed a full paper on few-layer MoO₃. Other highlights include a focus review by Charles Lieber and Xiaojie Duan on novel nanoscale devices for intracellular electrical recording of action potentials and a full paper entitled “Manifestations of Non-Planar Adsorption Geometries of Lead Pyrenocyanine at the Liquid-Solid Interface” by Klaus Müllen, Steven de Feyter and co-workers.