Physicist's diaries gifted to Fudan University (2)

Lu was born in Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, in 1914 into an intellectual family. From a young age he showed a keen interest in natural science.

In 1932, he was admitted to study physics at Yenching University in Beijing. In 1936, he went to the University of Minnesota in the US to study modern physics and atomic physics.

During his stay, Lu became the first person to measure the natural abundance ratio of lithium-7 and lithium-6.

In 1941, Lu gave up a well-paying job in the US and returned to China. He also quit a research project he had been working on with two US physicists, who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Physics for it.

But Lu continued his research and after World War II published an article on the physics of the atom bomb, which was the first to explain the actual principles of the device, Yang said.

In 1952, Lu joined Fudan University as a professor, where he taught many budding Chinese scientists, several of whom went on to work on research projects into the atomic bomb.

While many of Lu's academic manuscripts are now outdated, they record his strict attitude to scientific research, and that is something that's still worth learning, Yang said.