title: Min Guirong
text: # Min Guirong
  
  Min Guirong (Chinese: 闵桂荣; 2 June 1933 – 28 April 2021) was a Chinese thermophysicist and space technologist. He was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He was a member of the 8th and 9th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
  
  ## Biography
  
  Min was born in Putian, Fujian, on 2 June 1933, to a family of farming background. After graduating from Putian No.1 High School in 1952, he was admitted to Xiamen University. In 1952, Mao Zedong's government re-grouped the country's higher education institutions with individual institutions tending to specialize in a certain field of study after the Soviet model. He transferred to Nanjing Institute of Technology (now Southeast University). He joined the Communist Party of China in March 1955. In 1960, he was sent to the Soviet Academy of Sciences (now Russian Academy of Sciences) to study on government scholarships. He returned to China in 1963 and that same year became a researcher at the Institute of mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He participated in the design of China's first man-made satellite between 1965 and 1968. In 1968, he was promoted to vice president of China Academy of Space Technology, and served until January 1985. On 28 April 2021, he died of illness in Beijing, aged 87.
  
  ## Honours and awards
  
  * 1985 State Science and Technology Progress Award (Special Prize)
  * 1990 State Science and Technology Progress Award (Special Prize)
  * 1991 Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS)
  * 1992 Member of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA)
  * 1994 Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE)
  * 1996 Science and Technology Progress Award of the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation
  