China News Service, Wuhan, July 25 (Reporter Ma Furong) According to the news from the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, chief engineer of the Three Gorges Project, former chief engineer of the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources, member of the Party group, and member of the Yangtze River Water Resources Ministry of Water Resources Zheng Shouren, chairman of the Committee’s Science and Technology Committee, died of illness in Wuhan on July 24, 2020 at the age of 81.
Zheng Shouren (middle)'s early work photos (data map) courtesy of the Yangtze River Water Resources Commission of the Ministry of Water Resources
Zheng Shouren was born in January 1940, a native of Yingshang, Anhui, and joined the Communist Party of China in September 1965. He successively served as the leader of the professional diversion group of Wujiang Survey and Design Brigade, chief engineer of the Yangtze River Committee, member of the Party Group of the Yangtze River Committee of the Communist Party of China, and director of the Three Gorges Project Representative Bureau. He was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 1997, and served as the chairman of the Science and Technology Committee of the Yangtze River Committee in August 2003. He retired in February 2019.
Engaged in water conservancy work for 57 years, Zheng Shouren has been responsible for the whole process design of Wujiangdu, Gezhouba diversion and closure design, Geheyan, etc., and presided over the Three Gorges Project design assembly and site survey, design, and scientific research. The engineering design projects he is responsible for have won more than 40 awards at or above the provincial and ministerial levels, including 2 special prizes for national scientific and technological progress, 1 first prize, and 2 second prizes. He has successively won the National "May 1st" Labor Medal, the highest award in the international dam industry-the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Dam Commission, and the "Most Beautiful Struggler" since the founding of New China 70 years ago.
He has made outstanding contributions to advance the research on key technologies of the Yangtze River water conservancy project. He led the design team to climb the peak of world dam construction. In the design of Gezhouba diversion cofferdam and river closure, he proposed the "reinforced gabion" Longkou bottom protection plan, which greatly reduced the loss of entering and throwing materials, and achieved the first cut of the Yangtze River; The Heyan Water Conservancy Project has made important contributions to generating electricity one year ahead of schedule. Since being fully responsible for the design of the Three Gorges Project, in 1994, 1997, and 2002, he successfully solved the world's problems of intercepting the Yangtze River three times, successfully solving such major problems as the super-large water depth and soft silt sand, and the world's largest single-width energy of Longkou Helong.
Zheng Shouren takes the construction site as his home all the year round and is known as "the academician of the construction site." After two examinations for cancer, he still insisted on treatment and work. Whenever encountered natural disasters such as floods, he always took the lead in donating money, and the remittance slip only read "a worker of the Yangtze River Committee". Most of his manuscript fees and lecture fees are used for collective welfare or donated to colleagues in difficulties. (Finish)