"This is the first time in history for a famous British university, the Nottingham University, to invite a Chinese educationist to be its president. The glory should be a pride shared by all our colleagues in the educational circle," said Chen Zhili, minister of education in a letter of congratulation on the event.

As learned, it is a very appropriate move for the University of Nottingham, which is on the way to internationalization, to take up a Chinese who is able to help strengthen the international features as its president. This is released in a newsletter when the university made its announcement on the matter. Why the university executive committee recommended Prof. Yang Fujia to take up the post is because Prof. Yang is an outstanding academician who enjoys an international fame in the specialties he's working on.

Yang Fujia, aged 65, is a nuclear physicist. Graduated from the Physics Department of Fudan University in 1958, he has ever been director of the Department of Atomic Sciences and of the Research Institute of Modern Physics, dean of the Institute for Post-graduate Studies, vice-president and president of Fudan University. Now he is the director of Shanghai Institute for Nuclear Researches under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

After Prof. Yang assumes the presidency of University of Nottingham, the British Queen will give him an audience in the Buckingham Palace.

In an interview with the reporter, Prof. Yang stressed time and again that his engagement as the president of University of Nottingham is far beyond a thing of his personal honor, but an expression of a raised status enjoyed by the Chinese science and education in the nowadays world. He said he would play an active role in pushing ahead the exchanges between China and Britain in the fields of education and sciences.

(People's Daily 01/31/2001)