53 Notable alumni of Nanjing University

Zhao Zongyu was a Chinese chemist and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He has been hailed as "father of man-made oil in China".

Jingguang Chen is a Chinese-American chemical engineer. He is the Thayer Lindsley Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia University, with a joint appointment as Senior Chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States. Over the course of his career Chen has made significant contributions to the fundamental understanding and...

Karl R. Hearne is a film director and screenwriter, whose feature directorial debut Touched premiered on the film festival circuit in 2017 before being released theatrically in 2018. His 2023 feature The G, starring Dale Dickey, premiered at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, Glasgow and Munich Film Festivals and many others. He received a Special Jury Prize at the...

Sun Jiazheng is a politician of the People's Republic of China. He served as Minister of Radio, Film and Television between 1994 and 1998, before serving as Minister of Culture from March 1998 to March 2008. He was the chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles from 2006 to 2016.

Wang Zuo'an is a Chinese politician who served as director of the State Administration for Religious Affairs and vice-minister of the United Front Work Department from 2009 to 2022.

Wu Dingliang, also known as Woo Ting-Liang, was a pioneering Chinese anthropologist and educator. He is considered the founder of Chinese physical anthropology.

Wang Yening, also known as Ye-Ning (Y. N.) Wang, was a Chinese physicist. She was an educator with a specialization in condensed matter physics. She spent her entire career at Nanjing University and was elected an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991. She was a recipient of the State Natural Science Award (Second Class) and the Ho...

Zhu Jin is a Chinese astronomer. He is the current curator of Beijing Planetarium.

David Bruce Shear is an American diplomat who was a career Foreign Service Officer. Shear served as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs from July 2014 to June 2016. Prior to his nomination for this position, he served as United States Ambassador to Vietnam. He was also formerly deputy assistant secretary for East Asian and...

Wang Yinglai, also known as Ying-Lai Wang, was a Chinese biochemist recognized as the first person to create synthetic insulin, a major scientific breakthrough that produced a biologically active compound from inorganic chemicals. He was one of the first group of scientists elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955. He founded the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry in 1958...

Gu Su is a Chinese liberal political philosopher and was professor of Philosophy and Law at Nanjing University, China. After graduating from Nanjing University, he studied at Duke University between 1983 and 1986. After then he taught at Nanjing university as a faculty member. His main work is Essential Ideas of Liberalism, published in China and Taiwan several times, introducing...

Sun Guangyuan, also known as Sun Tang (孫鎕), was a Chinese mathematician.

Li Shengjiao was a senior Chinese diplomat, jurist, educator, scholar, bilingual author, former Nanjing sports star and an expert on the I Ching. Being recognized as an authority on international law and U.S.-China relations, Li was known for his contribution to the International Law of the Sea and China's boundary and ocean affairs.

Zeng Zhaoyu, also known as Tseng Chao-yu in English, was a Chinese archaeologist, museologist, and politician who served as president of Nanjing Museum between 1955 and 1964.

Sebastian Heilmann is a German political scientist and sinologist and has been a professor at the University of Trier since 1999. From 2013 to 2018 he was the founding director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS), established by the Stiftung Mercator to conduct policy-oriented China research and communicate its findings to the public.

Zheng Ji was a Chinese nutritionist and biochemist, sometimes regarded as the founder of modern nutrition science in China. He was reputed to be the world's oldest professor, having lived to the age of 110.

Han Lih-wu was a Chinese educator, politician and diplomat.

Shi Yinhong is a Chinese political scientist and international relations scholar. He is a distinguished professor of international relations, chairman of the Academic Committee of the School of International Studies, and director of the Centre on American Studies at the Renmin University of China. He has served as a counsellor at the Counsellors' Office of the State Council of China...

Kuo-Chen Chou was a Chinese-American biophysicist and bioinformatician who founded the Gordon Life Science Institute, a non-profit research organization in Boston, Massachusetts. Among other contributions, he developed pseudo amino acid composition (PseAAC), used in computational biology for proteomics analysis and pseudo K-tuple nucleotide composition (PseKNC) for genome analysis. He is the father of James Chou.

Chen Deming is a Chinese former politician and President of Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits of the People's Republic of China.

Yau Lit, born Yau Kwai-bok (尢季博), courtesy name Tui-hau (推孝) or Ling-kwai (令季), or Euclid Yau, was a Chinese revolutionary from Shuntak, Guangdong. He is one of the Four Bandits, together with Sun Yat-sen, Chan Siu-bak and Yeung Hok-ling.

Wu Youxun, also known as Y. H. Woo, was a Chinese physicist. His courtesy name was Zhèngzhī (正之).

Gilbert Ning Ling was a Chinese-born American cell physiologist, biochemist, and scientific investigator.

Slater David Rhea is an American singer, songwriter and television personality based in China. Rhea is a performer of Chinese music and has made appearances on China Central Television, China Education Television as well as local and provincial television stations across China. Rhea performs in Chinese (primarily Mandarin, but also in Shaanxi dialect), Mongolian, and English. While he rose to...

Chang Ch'i-yun was a Chinese historian, geographer, educator and politician. He was the founder of the Chinese Culture University and the Nanhai Academy, and served as Minister of Education of the Republic of China from 1954 to 1958. He was a lead editor on the Zhongwen Da Cidian.

Chan Siu-bak, courtesy name Siu-bak (少白), art-named Kwai-shek (夔石), was a Chinese revolutionary from Xinhui, Guangdong. He was one of the Four Bandits, together with Sun Yat-sen, Yau Lit and Yeung Hok-ling.

Li Hongkuan is a Chinese dissident.

Hualing Nieh Engle, née Nieh Hua-ling (Chinese: 聶華苓; pinyin: Niè Huálíng; Wade–Giles: Nieh Hua-ling), was a Chinese novelist, fiction writer, and poet. She was a professor emerita at the University of Iowa.

Shi Ping was a Chinese academic, political administrator, and supercentenarian. He is posthumously recognised as having been the world's oldest verified living man from the death of Venezuela's Juan Vicente Pérez on 2 April 2024, until his own death.

Fu Baoshi, or Fu Pao-Shih, (October 5, 1904– September 29, 1965) was a Chinese painter from Xinyu, Jiangxi. He went to Japan to study the History of Oriental Art in the Tokyo School of Fine Arts in 1933. He translated many books from Japanese and carried out his own research. In painting itself, he brought Japanese visual elements to the...

Zhang Qianfan is a constitutional law professor at Peking University Law School, and an activist who advocates constitutionalism in China and has called for China's general political and judicial reform.

Wang Hui is a professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Tsinghua University, Beijing. Wang is sometimes described as part of the Chinese New Left, although he does not describe himself as such.

Zhenan Bao is a Chinese-born American chemical engineer. She serves as K. K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University, with courtesy appointments in Chemistry and Material Science and Engineering. She served as the Department Chair of Chemical Engineering from 2018 to 2022. She was an Associate Editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Chemical Science, Polymer Reviews...

Chung-Yao Chao was a Chinese theoretical physicist. He studied the scattering of gamma rays in lead by pair production in 1930, without knowing that positrons were involved in the anomalously high scattering cross-section. When the positron was discovered by Carl David Anderson in 1932, confirming the existence of Paul Dirac's "antimatter", it became clear that positrons could explain Chung-Yao Chao's...

Sha Zukang is a Chinese diplomat who was head of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs from 2007 to 2012. He was previously the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Chen Guangbiao is a Chinese recycling entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the founder and chairman of Jiangsu Huangpu Renewable Resources Limited Company and was reportedly worth US$810 million in 2013, according to the rankings of the Chinese wealth research firm, Hurun Report; although, Forbes estimated his wealth at US$400 million in January 2014, while the Associated Press published an estimate...

Sir James Young Simpson, 1st Baronet FRSE FRCPE FSA Scot was a Scottish obstetrician and a significant figure in the history of medicine. He was the first physician to demonstrate the anaesthetic properties of chloroform in humans and helped to popularize its use in medicine.

Zhang Xiang JP is a Chinese-American mechanical engineer, currently serving as the 16th president and vice-chancellor of the University of Hong Kong since July 2018.

Fang Xianjue was a Chinese National Revolutionary Army general during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Under his command, the Chinese 10th Army defended Hengyang for 48 days during Operation Ichi-Go in 1944.

Liu Xin is a host and journalist for the English-language Chinese government-broadcaster China Global Television Network (CGTN), now hosting the opinion show named The Point with Liu Xin on weekdays at CGTN. She is fluent in Mandarin, English and French, and conversational in German and Turkish.

Guo Jinlong is a Chinese politician, who served as the Vice Chairman of the Central Guidance Commission on Building Spiritual Civilization, and was a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party. Between 2008 and 2012 Guo served as the Mayor of Beijing, and Party Secretary of Beijing between 2012 and 2017. As the Mayor of Beijing during the...

Yi Huiman is a Chinese banker who served as chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission from 2019 to 2024. He is the former chairman of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

Hua Chunying is a Chinese diplomat who has been serving as Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of China since 2024. She most notably served as spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-American particle and experimental physicist who made significant contributions in the fields of nuclear and particle physics. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, where she helped develop the process for separating uranium into uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. She is best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which proved that parity is not conserved....

François Cheng is a Chinese-born French academician, writer, poet, and calligrapher. He is the author of essays, novels, collections of poetry and books on art written in the French language, and the translator of some of the great French poets into Chinese.

Lyuh Woon-hyung, also known by his art name Mongyang (몽양; 夢陽), was a Korean independence activist and reunification activist.

Chen Jieru, also romanized Ch'en Chieh-ju, was the second wife of Chiang Kai-shek. She was nicknamed Jennie.

Li Kwoh-ting was a Chinese economist and politician best known as the "Father of Taiwan's Economic Miracle" and referred to by the New York Times as the "Godfather of Technology" in Taiwan for his work in transforming Taiwan's economy from an agrarian-based system into one of the world's leading producers of information and telecommunications technology. His career spanned some 40...

Wu Liangyong is a Chinese architect and urban planner. He was a former professor in urban planning, architecture, and design. In preparation to the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, he was leading the team that studied the buildings of the games. He is considered the most influential architect and urban planner in China.

Yan Jici, also commonly known as Ny Tsi-ze, was a Chinese physicist and politician who is considered a founder of modern physics in China. He was a founding member of Academia Sinica in 1948 and of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1955. He served as founding director of the CAS Institute of Physics and the second president of...

Xia Peisu or Pei-su Hsia was a Chinese computer scientist and educator known for her pioneering research in computer science and technology. The leading developer of Model 107, the nation's first domestically designed general-purpose electronic computer, she has been called the "Mother of Computer Science in China". She and her husband Yang Liming were both elected academicians of the Chinese...

Lu Dingyi was a leader of the Chinese Communist Party. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China and before the Cultural Revolution, he was credited as one of the top officials in socialist culture.