By Li Han
Staff Writer of the Tsinghua News Center
June 8 is renowned mathematician Chia-Chiao Lin’s 90th birthday. Many world-famous scientists extend their regards to Professor Lin and commemorate their experiences with him.
“Through many decades” Professor Lin “has been a mentor, a friend, and a role model for his colleagues, postdoctoral researchers, and students. We are very pleased to see him healthy and active in research still. What an inspiration he is for us all,” said Professor Frank H. Shu, former President of Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu and now a professor of University of California, San Diego.
“It should come as no surprise that I have known Prof. Lin for most of my life. What might be more of a surprise is that he has now known me for most of his life! As I shall reveal in this talk, almost everything of use in mathematics that I know, I learned from C. C. Lin. Although I first met him at an age of 14, I did not get to know him well until I went to MIT as an undergraduate physics major forty-seven years ago. At that time the two most famous mathematicians at MIT were Norbert Wiener and C. C. Lin. Despite Lin’s eminence, he had time to mentor a confused undergraduate who at that time did not know what he wanted to do in life,” said Professor Frank H. Shu at the opening ceremony of the Second International Symposium on the Frontier of Applied Mathematics in celebration of the 90th birthday of Professor Lin.
“It is dangerous to be right on matters in which the established authorities are wrong.” Fortunately, in science for the long term, it pays to live dangerously if the risks that one takes are calculated. For the lesson to have the courage of one’s convictions in the face of controversy, we again have C. C. Lin to thank. Indeed, for an example of how to be a great scientist and an even finer human being, there is no better role model for all of us than C. C. Lin,” Professor Frank H. Shu noted.
“Professor Lin is a serious scientist, but he is very friendly and with a sense of humor,” said Professor David Benney, former Chairman of Department of Mathematics in MIT.
