Zhao Jiuzhang

Early life and studies abroad

Zhao Jiuzhang, whose family came from Wuxing in Zhejiang, was born in Kaifeng, Henan, on 15 October 1907. According to a 2025 article in the CPPCC Daily, the family's declining fortunes forced him to work as an apprentice in Shanghai after primary school; in 1922 he entered the Henan Preparatory School for Study in Europe and America with the top score, and in 1925 he left Kaifeng to study in Hangzhou. He entered the physics department of Tsinghua University in 1929 and stayed on as a teaching assistant after graduating in 1933. In 1935 he went to the University of Berlin to study dynamic meteorology, upper-air meteorology and dynamic oceanography under the meteorologist Heinrich von Ficker, and returned to China after receiving his doctorate in 1938. According to the Museum of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and “Two Bombs, One Satellite” at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, he was a nephew of the senior Kuomintang figure Dai Jitao and served as Dai's confidential secretary in his youth.

Meteorology and geophysics

After returning, Zhao taught at Tsinghua University and National Southwestern Associated University. In 1941 he also became a research fellow at the Institute of Meteorology of Academia Sinica, and in 1944 its acting director. The CAS museum says that when Academia Sinica was ordered to move to Taiwan in 1949, he and some of the institute's scientists chose to remain on the mainland. After 1949 he helped establish the Institute of Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and became its director, and also served as director of the Institute of Applied Geophysics. He was named a member of the Academy in 1955 and served as president of both the Chinese Meteorological Society and the Chinese Geophysical Society. Official accounts credit him with bringing mathematical and physical methods into meteorology and advancing dynamic meteorology, atmospheric circulation, numerical weather prediction, space science and ocean physics; under his leadership the institutes also studied seismic observation of nuclear tests and the propagation of shock waves.

In 1958 Zhao became the first head of the Department of Applied Geophysics at the newly founded University of Science and Technology of China. According to an article by a researcher at the university's archives, in October 1962 he wrote to Zhang Jingfu, Party secretary of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and others proposing that the university coordinate graduate training across the Academy. In 1964 the university began running a graduate school in Beijing on the Academy's behalf; the plan was later shelved, and the graduate school formally established in 1978 is regarded as the first in the People's Republic. Zhao was also a member of the standing committee of the Jiusan Society's central committee, a member of the Standing Committee of the 3rd CPPCC National Committee, and a member of the Standing Committee of the 3rd National People's Congress.

Advocating a Chinese satellite

After the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite in October 1957, Zhao wrote articles and gave talks urging China to develop its own. According to the CAS museum, in early 1958 he, Qian Xuesen and Zhu Kezhen jointly proposed to the central leadership that China begin satellite research. That year the Academy set up the “581” group to study satellites, with Qian as head and Zhao as deputy head. In October 1958 Zhao led the Academy's upper-atmosphere physics delegation on a visit of more than 70 days to the Soviet Union; the delegation's request to see the inside of a satellite was refused. That year he argued that China must develop satellites through self-reliance, “from small to large, from low to high”; after returning from the Soviet Union he advised the central leadership to turn for the time being to meteorological and biological rockets.

At the end of 1964 Zhao wrote to Zhou Enlai proposing that a satellite launch be made part of the national plan. The satellite project was approved in 1965 under the code name “Project 651.” A design review meeting convened that October (the “651 meeting”) ran for 42 days and produced four plans—for the overall system, the satellite body, the launch vehicle and ground tracking—envisaging a near-spherical, 72-faced satellite one metre in diameter that would broadcast “The East Is Red” and be launched in 1970. In January 1966 Zhao became director of the Academy's Satellite Design Institute. Official accounts say he played an important role in China's satellite development plans and in settling the overall designs of the first satellite and of recoverable satellites. A 2024 article in People's Weekly, published by the People's Daily group, calls him the “chief designer” of Dongfanghong-1; the CAS museum records that the person responsible for the satellite's overall design at the time was Qian Ji.

Persecution and death in the Cultural Revolution

After the Cultural Revolution began, Zhao was denounced as a “reactionary academic authority” and no longer directed satellite work. The CAS museum says he was targeted because of his family ties to Dai Jitao and was paraded through the streets wearing a placard and subjected to struggle sessions. According to a 2016 Xinhua report, the satellite team was badly disrupted in this period, and the rocket-materials expert Yao Tongbin was beaten to death.

According to the CAS museum, Zhao died at his home in Beijing early on the morning of 26 October 1968 after taking sleeping pills; he was 61. Official biographies usually say only that he “died in October 1968.” Dongfanghong-1 was launched on 24 April 1970, about 18 months after his death.

Commemoration and assessment

Zhao received a special-class National Science and Technology Progress Award in 1985. In 1997 a bronze statue of him was completed on the initiative of 44 scientists including Wang Ganchang. On 18 September 1999 the Party Central Committee, the State Council and the Central Military Commission posthumously awarded him the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” Meritorious Service Medal. In 2007 asteroid 7811 was named after him. On 15 October 2020 his daughters donated the medal to the Academy's National Space Science Center, and a biography of Zhao in the Academy's series of academician biographies was published the same day. Official Chinese accounts describe him as “one of the advocates and founders of China's satellite program.”