After 40 years in US, pioneering mathematician Zhongwei Shen returns to China

Pioneering Chinese-American mathematician Zhongwei Shen has left the United States to take up a chair professorship at Westlake University in Hangzhou.

He joined Westlake’s School of Science in July to continue decades of research on partial differential equations and harmonic analysis – mathematical fields that form the backbone of modelling the natural world, according to the university website.

Shen, who was admitted to Peking University as a maths major at just 14, has spent 40 years in the US, including nearly three decades at the University of Kentucky, where he became a distinguished professor and served as chair of the mathematics department.

A founding member of the inaugural class of American Mathematical Society Fellows, Shen has also maintained close ties with China, including being named a Changjiang Scholar at Lanzhou University in 2015.

In an official announcement, Shen said he had long considered returning to China and closely followed developments back home. “I never considered going to another country,” he said. “If I were to leave, it’d have to be China, because that’s home.”

He said he was drawn to Westlake by its high-level, research-focused approach and the international character of its maths department. “I hope to help Westlake University become a top research university,” he added.