Zhang Cunhao

Chinese Engineer. Expert in solid rocket propellants and chemical lasers.

Educated Nanjing; Michigan.

Official Chinese Academy of Sciences Biography

Zhang Cunhao (Chang Tsun-Hao)

Physical chemist. Born in Tianjin. Received BS in chemical engineering from Nanjing Central University in 1947 and M.Sc. in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan, USA in 1950. Research professor, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, president, National Natural Science Foundation of China, and academician, Third World Academy of Sciences.

Zhang's research interest in the 1950s was chiefly in the synthesis of liquid fuels from water gas. He developed a nitrided and alkalized fused iron catalyst and solved the problem of back-mixing in a fluidized bed. He was engaged in the study of rocket propellants and combustion of rocket engines in the 1960s when he collaborated in the development of a multilayer flame theory that elucidates the erosive burning of solid propellants. In the 1970s, he led an extensive study on chemical lasers and developed a supersonic combustion-driven hydrogen fluoride/deuterium fluoride laser. He has paid great attention to the chemistry and spectroscopy of excited molecules since the 1980s. He and his collaborators proposed the use of double resonance multiphoton ionization spectroscopic techniques to study very short-lived molecular species, Jahn-Teller effect (which led to the discovery of Jahn-Teller induced Fermi resonance) and various types of molecular energy transfer with subrotational resolution.

He was elected Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980.