Nankai University was founded in 1919 as a private university. Right at its birth, based on the belief of science education is an approach for national salvation, Nankai University was set up and equipped with both liberal art and science. Its characteristics distinguished Nankai from other private universities at that time. Then, although the science subject at Nankai University didn't divide into physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics (called as Arithmetic) sections yet, the physics course was offered. In fact, it was hard to employ qualified teachers who could teach fundamental physics, so that the courses were in intermittence. At that time indeed only few students took the courses and some of them were transferred to other schools. Actually, no one successfully completed physics education at the birth time of the physics school.
In 1922, Dr. Yutai Rao who studied in US and returned back to China with his doctoral degree, was invited by Mr. Boling Zhang, the president of Nankai University to join the faculty. Prof. Rao was immediately assured to be the director of the physics department. Meanwhile, the apparatus and equipment pre-purchased in US also arrived at Nankai and a science laboratory was set up . At that time, the department of physics there were several teachers including the director and a few lab assistants. Thus the Department of Physics was officially established (Nankai University History Selected Materials Nankai University Press 1989, p. 218).
On Jul. 7, 1937, Japanese militarism provoked the Lugou-Bridge event, and from then the anti-Japanese war broke out. On Jul. 28, Peiping city (nowadays it is Beijing) was occupied by the Japanese aggressors. On Jul. 29 Japanese army invaded Tianjin. The Nankai campus was bombed and some buildings were damaged by cannonry of Japanese troops. The beautiful campus was nearly razed to the ground. To maintain the essence and elites of the Nation, the Nankai University was required to move to Changsha, and constituted the Changsha Union University with Peking University and Tsinghua University. A new term began on Oct. 25, 1937 and official classes started on Nov. 1. The office of Nankai University was assigned at Room 208, Main Building, Changsha Bible Institute, the physics labs were set at Room 206, 209, 211 and 212, while the wireless labs were at Room 301, 303, 304 and 305. Soon after Changsha Temporary University began its first term, the heroic Chinese people fought an arduous battle to protect Wusong-Shanghai city, but unfortunately Shanghai eventually fell into hands of Japanese. On Dec. 13, 1937, Nanjing, the capital of the National Government, was also occupied. By the command of Education Ministry of the National Government, the Changsha Temporary University left Changsha on Feb. 20, 1938 for Kunming, Yunnan. On Apr. 21, 1938, at the supreme national defense conference of the National Government, Changsha Temporary University was renamed as National Southwestern Associated University, and officially started on May 4, 1938. During the whole period of the Anti-Japanese War, Nankai University was one member of the united university and lived through the four hard and glorious years. During the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, the original campus of Nankai University was destroyed by Japanese invaders, thus after the victory of the war, reconstruction of new campus began in 1946. At that time, Nankai University became a national university officially.
During the liberation war in 1949, the students of Nankai University helped the liberation army by directing them march routes, and set up a nursing station for wounded soldiers. Happy Nankai people hailed the rebirth of school. On Jan. 15, 1949, whole city of Tianjin was liberated. Nankai people celebrated and claimed that Nankai University came back. Since then, Nankai University entered its new development era. Through the Department adjustment in 1952, the Department of Physics at Peiyang University (current Tianjin University) and the Department of Physics at Nankai University merged, the teachers and students were correspondingly made their decision if they chose physics as their career. The Department of Physics had achieved a considerable scale.
The second Physics Department (or Department of physics II) was established in 1960 aiming to study radiative nuclear physics and chemistry. Professor Tianchi Chen was designated as the first director and Party branch secretary. In 1965, Physics Department II moved to Lanzhou and merged with similar departments from a few other universities.
Department of Physics started its re-construction on May 27, 1953, and nearly 4,000 m2 teaching area was provided in a new education building. In 1958, following the No.3 teaching building, another one (No.5) of over 5,000m2 began operation. Till then, about 10,000 m2 areas were available for both teaching and research of Department of Physics (besides the machinery and electronic-circuit workshops).
In the Department several special groups for teaching and research were organized, and the teachers could join any group according to his(her) career choice. On Jan. 26, 1962, the Administration Committee of Nankai University decided to re-organize those groups by attributing them to individual teaching and researching divisions which were responsible for arranging teaching assignments and research activities of the concerned fields. At the early time, the department only owned a team which taught basic courses and did research on fundamental physics, and another division was optics. With the development of education and improvement of research conditions, there were more divisions established in the department.
The departments of natural science in Nankai University includes Department of physics, Department of Mathematics, Department of Chemistry and Department of Biology. Prof. Jingyuan Zhao was appointed as the deputy director of the department of physics in charge of teaching and research on Oct. 31, 1953.
Optics teaching and research sector is one of the first one of teaching and research sectors established at comprehensive universities of China. The scientific researches in the Spectroscopy were conducted by capable faculty with advanced experimental apparatus. Moreover, it received support of sufficient teaching foundation in 1954. The modern optics research sector was approved by the Ministry of Education of China in 1979, then the modern optics institute was founded in Mar. 1984 with the approval of the National Education Committee.
Electronic physics sector began in 1955. The Hebei Education office notified Nankai University to set up the radio electronic physics branch with the approval of the State Council in Sep. 1960 (during that time, Tianjin belonged to Hebei Province). It changed into electrical vacuum sector during the Great Cultural Revolution, then recovered its former name in 1979. The sector moved into newly-completed electric vacuum building.
Before the Great Cultural Revolution, both radio physics and the electronic physics sectors were in the unique radio-electronic physics branch, with two distinct special directions. The Nation-wide entrance exam was recovered in 1971. Following the general trend, the branch was divided into the electronic physics and the radio physics sectors respectively.
The physics department set up the solid-state physics sector in 1956. Two years later, namely in 1958, during the crazy period of all population metallurgy, solid was renamed as metal, so the solid state physics sector was called as the metal physics sector and the research trend was conformed. The Hebei education office demanded Nankai University to set up the metal physics specialization which was approved by the State Council in Sep. 1960. In 1965. The department of physics undertook the national key scientific research task - GZ No. 026 Solid Energy Spectrum which was a project of the national ten-year science development plan, and then a special sector of solid energy spectrum was set up to be responsible for this task. No more than one year later, the metal physics sector was blown out by the unprecedented windstorm. In 1978, several faculty members of the former “metal” branch constituted the solid energy spectrum sector and resumed research and teaching on the solid-state physics. In 1979, the solid-state physics sector was formally founded. Later, the “condensed matter physics” replaced the name in nineties.
The semiconductor sector began preparation in 1958. The Hebei Education Office suggested Nankai University to officially set up the semiconductor sector which was approved by the State Council in 1960 and started recruiting students of semiconductor major. Since the scientific research on semiconductor is closely related to industrial production, an attached semiconductor factory appeared in 1969. A building for semi-conductivity research was completed in 1976, and a full system combining teaching, scientific research and production was formed.
The theoretical physics sector was established in 1953, and Prof. Renlie Chen was appointed to be the director on Oct. 12, 1953. However this sector was dissolved later. After a while the university decided to establish a new theoretical physics branch in the Physics Department in 1960. But it shattered during the ten chaotic years. In Oct. 1978, a theoretical physics branch was established officially, which was one of the first branches in the Department of Physics with authorization of conferring Ph.D degrees, approved by the state.
The computer science section was established in Jan. 1980, which was named as the electronic circuit section at the beginning and changed into computer science in Apr. With the rapid development of computer science, starting the preparation in 1983, the automatic control and software majors in the department of mathematics, and the computer major (former computer design branch) in the department of physics jointly formed the department of Computer and System Science of Nankai University in the Spring of 1984. Professor Ruiting Liu of Physics Department was designated as the first chairman.
The biophysics branch was founded in Oct. 1981, starting research in 1978, and an active biophysics research group was formed in Sep. 1979. In 1982, the first batch of students working in this direction graduated.
Department of Physics of Nankai University is also equipped with a reference room, an instrumentation room, a machinery workshop and a radio-electrical workshop.
When Prof. Yutai Rao served as the director of the Department of Physics, a Book Library was established, with 585 kinds of books and scientific journals. The library was destroyed during the journey to Kunming. During the Anti-Japanese War the campus of Nankai University was severely damaged and most of apparatus and buildings were destructed by the Japanese invaders, thus after the war, almost everything needed to be recovered and to equip a new library, all books could only be purchased later.
In Aug. 1954, the 66th university administrative meeting made a decision about gradually optimizing the working system and setting up the formal order including to set up reference rooms in 8 Departments such as Department of Physics, Department of Chemistry, etc. and organize the Marxism-Leninism teaching and researching group.
In 1955, the reference room of Department of Physics was to be located in the east side of the third floor of the building No.3, which owned dozens of publications in both Chinese and foreign languages. It occupied an area of about 30m2, but only employed one clerk to take care of all the work. With the development of the Department, following increase of the number of teachers and students, the area of the reference room gradually expanded. On the eve of the Great Cultural Revolution, according to the data it provided over 240 western journals, and about 40 journals in Russian and 30 in Chinese. Meanwhile, over six thousand books were collected and stored in the library which were marked by the catalogue cards according to author names, book name. They were classified and stored tidily in the reference room. The classification cards for the journal helped teachers, senior students and even the relevant units of Tianjin city to look for the books in need. During the Great Cultural Revolution, the reference room was severely damaged again. By the order of some authority, almost most main scientific journals were forbidden to subscribe, number of western journals was reduced to only 32. Since the University stopped all functions, failure of effective management and loss of many books and journals caused interruption of information from outside world and led serious impact to the Department of Physics. Direct consequence is to make recovery of the teaching and scientific research discipline more difficult. In 1979, Prof. Guozhu He was chosen to be the chairman of Physics Department, and he advocated to adjust the administrators of the reference room to let it play an active role. At the beginning of the 1980s, there were 318 journals in English, German, French and Japanese,
over 30 Russian journals, and 500 Chinese journals (including some free journals available only for communication), more than ten thousand bounded outdated journals and 850 important reference books. Five clerks serve in over 270m2 reading hall and storage room. In the reference room the data communication linkage is available, compiles relevant data for consultation. The instrumentation room storing equipment and apparatus for education and research was established in 1951. At that time only one worker took care of over 50 instruments whose total worth was only RMB 30,000. With the development of Department of Physics, its perspective scope has been rapidly widened. Four new groups: accounting, instrument management and material management join the maintaining branch. They take charge of the supply and management of equipment needed for teaching and scientific research: the procurement, allocation, borrowing, compensation and other matters of instrumentation materials. The financial office is in charge of the bursar business for the department, namely manage the fund either from the Nation or the municipal government. The instrumentation room also suffered from severe destruction during the Great Cultural Revolution, of which many experimental apparatuses were demolished, and the instrument materials were disposed as waste. In 1978, the instrumentation division was recovered and developed where 10 workers managed 6,695 instruments whose total price reaches over RMB 10.48 million, including over 70 large-scale equipment with unit price over RMB 20,000 and the total price ofover RMB 3.6 million, and over 3,056 low-priced consumables at the price of over RMB 0.3 million. It provided the instruments and materials to guarantee 275 experiments for undergraduate education and 82 scientific research experimental subjects in Department of Physics to be successfully and smoothly conducted.
Machinery and circuit workshops were equipped with one instrument-repairing room when the department moved to the Science Museum. Up to 1948, there were one small lathe, bench drill, bench vice and hand grinder, respectively. After 1955, with the enhancement of the scientific research and increase of students' graduation theses, and gradually more metal parts were to be processed, one lathe, planning machine and miller were added. Moreover, 6 workers were employed. In 1957, it was moved to the newly-finished workshop at the north bank of Weijin River. The workshop was expanded further in 1960, and the number of workers increased to over 70. With an adjustment made later, there were 44 workers in the 1980s, with two subordinate workshops. The bench workshop included the electro gas welding and spray painting, while the turner workshop included the lathe, milling, planning and grinding. At that time, main equipment included 14 lathes, 3 grinders, 4 universal millers, 2 profile milling machines, 2 planning machines, 2 shearing machines, 5 punch presses, 1 vertical drill, 2 radial drills, 3 bench drills, 1 slotting machine, 2 spray pumps, 1 large oven and 2 electric welding machines.
The machinery workshop not only manufactured the experimental facilities needed in the teaching and scientific research for the department, but also produced some teaching instruments. The early products included the steel scope, spot recorder, powder camera, Laue camera, etc. It also produced over 200 purifiers, over 30 clean benches, over hundred thin layer chromatographs, 6 Michelson interferometers, 20 scanning interferometers and over 200 air-cushion turntables in the 1970s.
Founded in 1958, the radio electrical workshop was a part of the machinery workshop where only 2 workers were formally employed. During the so-called Great Leap Forward, the teachers and students participated in the production work, and the products included the low frequency oscillator, magnetic saturation voltage-stabilized source, oscillographic polarography, etc. The students resumed classes in 1959, and the number of workers increased to 5. It belonged to the radiology division from 1971 to 1976 while over 800 transistorized voltage stabilizers, 1,000 transistorized millivolt meters and over 30 micro-current amplifiers were produced. There were 16 workers when it was separated from the teaching part and merged into the machinery workshop. Later, in cooperation with the computer science division, it developed new business. Besides producing over 20 low-frequency micro voltmeters, it was also equipped with 100 sets of microcomputer training system ET－3400 manufactured by the America Heath Company. In recent two and a half years, the radiology workshop has created over RMB 0.8 million for University.
Concerning the education of undergraduates, the department of physics received the teachers who needed advanced studies from sister colleges, and started various training courses according to the requirements of the superior office. In Jan. 1960, the Higher Education Authority of Hebei Education Department decided to start a professional teachers' training course of radio electronics at Nankai University in the spring, and its main majors included microelectronic physics, microwave and radio circuit. The participants were the senior students of institutions of other universities, such as the Shandong University, etc., and most of them would be recruited to the faculty staff after graduation.
On Aug. 10, 1958, The Party Committee of Nankai University called on having a good communism summer vacation, and launched a large-scale mass movement of vigorously doing scientific research and running factory by combining the teaching and production, struggling for fifteen days and presenting a gift toward the National Day in the whole University.
On Aug. 13, 1958, the President Zedong Mao arrived at Nankai University for inspection.
On Sep. 20, 1958, after arduous effort of 40 days, the department of physics manufactured the β spectrometer On Jun. 11, 1960, The Party Standing Committee of the University decided:set up the Department of Atomic Energy based on the atomic nucleus major of the physics departments and the radiochemistry major of the chemistry department, which was officially named as the Physics Department II on Jul. 29. Original Department of Physics was named as Physics Department I.
