"Poet Academician" Wang Yuming: Always have a pure heart

He is an expert in mechanical design and theory, and a lover of poetry, photography, calligraphy and music. He integrates science and technology with humanities and arts, and always pursues truth, goodness and beauty. He is Wang Yuming, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, who was called "poet academician" by Yang Shuzi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

When Wang Yuming was in high school, he liked both mathematics, physics and chemistry, as well as Chinese, especially Chinese classical poetry. Under the guidance of his father, he chose science and engineering, and the poet's dream was deeply buried in his heart. Wang Yuming was admitted to the gas turbine major of the Department of Power Machinery of Tsinghua University from a county middle school. This major was founded by Wu Zhonghua, the famous founder of the ternary flow theory of turbomachinery, and the teachers paid special attention to cultivating students' "physical concepts" and "physical intuition". Wang Yuming's professional basic courses are mainly fluid mechanics, solid mechanics, thermodynamics and heat transfer, which laid a solid theoretical foundation for him. Many technical problems are often solved after pondering and thinking hard, relying on the "physical intuition" established by combining theory with practice, and suddenly a flash of inspiration finds solutions or even invents something. As Wang Guowei said about the third realm of learning: "I have searched for her thousands of times in the crowd, and when I look back suddenly, she is there, in the dim light."

Wang Yuming is a leading figure in my country's field of high-parameter, long-life, high-reliability fluid seals. He has made important contributions, especially in the development and industrialization of fluid dynamic pressure non-contact mechanical seals for large-scale high-speed turbine compressors in the petroleum and petrochemical industries. He has won four National Technological Invention Awards and Science and Technology Progress Awards (ranked 1, 1, 1, 3), twelve provincial and ministerial science and technology awards, and the honorary title of "National Outstanding Entrepreneur in the Machinery Industry" and the "Science and Technology Achievement Award" from the Chinese Society of Mechanical Engineers.

Busy professional studies and scientific research work did not extinguish Wang Yuming's love for literature and art. In 1962, when he was a junior in college, he insisted on writing poems. His calligraphy works have also been exhibited many times. In addition, he is well-known in the industry for cultivating and supporting young and middle-aged scientific and technological talents.

Wang Yuming's mentor, Ye Jiaying, said to Wang Yuming: "You are a true poet who has not lost his childlike innocence." "You are the most enthusiastic and accomplished person among those who have learned poetry from me. Your achievements are mainly due to your innate pure and innocent heart."

Regarding the relationship between literature and art and science and technology, Wang Yuming said: scientific research is mainly logical thinking, using the left brain; literature and art are mainly figurative thinking, using the right brain. Literature and art can keep people passionate and stimulate intuition, inspiration, and epiphany, while scientific research requires not only logical thinking, but also intuition, inspiration, and epiphany. As the French writer Flaubert said: "Science and art separate at the foot of the mountain and meet at the top of the mountain."

When introducing Wang Yuming, Chen Xu, Party Secretary of Tsinghua University, said: "Our teachers love life and have good taste. As everyone knows, Wang Yuming from the Department of Mechanical Engineering is also a poet and photographer. He combines the beauty of science and the beauty of humanity in one, continuing Tsinghua's fine tradition of integration and vividly interpreting the spiritual realm of seeking truth, goodness and beauty."

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