Prof. CHEN Zhu, a renowned life scientist and CAS vice president, has been appointed China's new minister of health. Chen, 54, is to replace 63-year-old GAO Qiang.

  A Paris-trained scientist, Chen is the second person who is not a member of the Communist Party of China to be given such a key appointment since the late 1970s, following the appointment of Wan Gang as S&T minister in April this year.

    Prof. Chen, born in Shanghai, was sent to the countryside in Jiangxi Province for re-education in 1970 during the so-called Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). During the five years in the countryside, Chen learnt medicine by himself and became a barefoot doctor. In 1975 he was selected to study at a medical school in Jiangxi, and in 1978 he went back to Shanghai for graduate studies.

    Chen obtained a master's degree in medical science from Shanghai Second Medical University in 1981. He received his doctorate from the Institute of Hematology of Hospital Saint-Louis, connected to University Paris VII, in 1989. He carried out postdoc studies in Hospital Saint-Louis, University Paris VII in France.

    Back in China, he spent most of his time in Shanghai, working in hospitals and institutes on blood-related diseases and molecular immunology. Chen, a Member of CAS, the French Academy of Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences, won international acclaim for his achievements in the clinical and molecular studies of the treatment of acute promyelocytic leukemia.

    Before the latest appointment, Chen was vice president of CAS, making great efforts to boost the development of China's life sciences and biotechnology, and attract overseas Chinese scholars and scientists back to China.

    He is one of the CAS scientists who have recently become administrators of governmental departments or institutions, including hydro-biologist CHEN Yiyu who now works as the president of the National Natural Science Foundation of China; XU Zhihong, a botanist who has been appointed president of the Peking University; ZHANG Jie, a physicist who is taking the helm of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University; and RAO Zihe, a bio-physicist who has been appointed president of Nankai University.