Tang was born on 18 November 1915 in Yixing, Jiangsu, Republic of China. He entered the Department of Chemistry of Peking Universityin the summer of 1936. When the Second Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1937, Beijing came under Japanese attack and Peking University, together with Tsinghua and Nankai universities, evacuated to Kunming in Southwest China. In Kunming, the universities combined their diminished resources to form the temporary National Southwestern Associated University, where Tang continued his studies. After graduating in 1940, he was hired by the university as a faculty member. After the end of World War II, Tang was sent to the United States in 1946 to study nuclear physics, together with Tsung-Dao Lee, who would win the Nobel Prize in 1957, and other distinguished scientists. However, Sino-American relations deteriorated after the Chinese Civil War broke out, and Tang studied chemistry at Columbia University instead of nuclear physics. After earning his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1949, Tang returned to the newly established People's Republic of China in early 1950 and became a professor of Peking University. In 1952, he moved to Changchun to help establish Jilin University. He founded the university's Department of Chemistry, and served as Vice President of the university from 1956. After the Cultural Revolution, he served as President of Jilin University from 1978 to 1986, and as President Emeritus afterwards until his death. He was elected a founding member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955 and a member of the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science in 1981.
Scientific contributions
Tang's research was mainly focused on quantum chemistry, polymer chemistry, and polymer physics. In the 1950s, he pioneered a method to calculate the "potential function of molecular internal rotation". He later made contributions to the ligand field theory and developed three graph theorems of molecular orbital. He co-authored eight monographs and was conferred four consecutive State Natural Science Awards, an unprecedented achievement. Tang is widely considered the "Father of Quantum Chemistry" in China. Five of his students were elected academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991 and 1993, and many of his students became leaders of theoretical chemistry in major Chinese universities, including Peking, Nanjing, Xiamen, and Beijing Normal University. In 1986, Tang established the National Natural Science Foundation of China and served as its first president.
