By Li Han

Staff Writer of the Tsinghua News Center

Academician Rao Zihe and Wang Xiaoyun, a Professor of Tsinghua, were awarded the Tan Kah Kee Science Awards at a ceremony held in the Great Hall of the People June 6.

Rao Zihe, a molecular biophysicist and structural biologist, was born in the city of Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. He graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 1977, and got his Master’s degree from the Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) in 1982. In 1989, Rao received his doctorate from Melbourne University and then joined Prof. Dave Stuart’s group in Oxford University, where he worked until 1996. He was a professor of Tsinghua from 1997 to 2006.

                    Rao Zihe                                              Wang Xiaoyun

Professor Wang Xiaoyun was born in 1966 in Shandong Province. She got Ph.D in Mathematics in Shandong University in 1993 and was renowned for breaking two international cipher systems for electronic communications, MD5 and SHA-1, spotting loopholes in the latter.

The Tan Kah Kee Science Awards grew out of the former Tan Kah Kee Awards, which were established in 1988 and named after Mr. Tan Kah Kee (1874-1961), a well-known overseas Chinese leader who had contributed greatly to the development of science and education in China. The Awards were first set up by Mr. Tan's relatives, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences was entrusted with its organization and evaluation of awardees.