Chen Tiemei (; 30 June 1935 – 25 October 2018) was a Chinese physicist and archaeologist, considered a pioneer in scientific archaeology and a founder of quantitative archaeology in China. He was a professor and Director of the Scientific Archaeology Laboratory at

Peking University Peking University (PKU; ) is a public research university in Beijing, China. The university is funded by the Ministry of Education. Peking University was established as the Imperial University of Peking in 1898 when it received its royal charte ...

Life and career

Chen was born on 30 June 1935 in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

, Republic of China. After graduating from

Shanghai High School Shanghai High School () is a top public high school in Shanghai, China. It also has an international division, the Shanghai High School International Division. In a 2016 ranking of Chinese high schools that send students to study in American unive ...

in 1952, he tested into the Department of Physics of

. In August 1954, he was sent by the Chinese government to study physics at

Leningrad University Saint Petersburg State University (SPBU; russian: Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет) is a public research university in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Founded in 1724 by a decree of Peter the G ...

in the Soviet Union. Upon graduation in 1959, Chen returned to China to teach at the

Dalian Institute of Technology Dalian University of Technology (DUT) (), colloquially known in Chinese as Dagong (), is a public research university located in Dalian, Liaoning, China, with an additional campus in Panjin, Liaoning. Established in April 1949, it is the ...

. In 1961, he became a faculty member of the Department of Technical Physics at Peking University. In 1973, he was transferred to the Department of Archaeology and served as Director of the Scientific Archaeology Laboratory. He became a full professor of archaeology in 1989 and a doctoral advisor in 1994. He was proficient in English and Russian, and taught himself German and Japanese. He was a corresponding member of the

German Archaeological Institute The German Archaeological Institute (german: Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, ''DAI'') is a research institute in the field of archaeology (and other related fields). The DAI is a "federal agency" under the Federal Foreign Office of Germany ...

. Chen died on 25 October 2018 in Beijing, at the age of 83.

Contributions

A pioneer in scientific archaeology, Chen established China's first

radiocarbon dating Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an object containing organic material by using the properties of radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon. The method was de ...

laboratory using

liquid scintillation counting Liquid scintillation counting is the measurement of radioactive activity of a sample material which uses the technique of mixing the active material with a liquid scintillator (e.g. zinc sulfide), and counting the resultant photon emissions. The pur ...

at Peking University. He was instrumental in establishing laboratories and training personnel for carbon-14 dating in China. He dated more than 20

palaeolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός '' palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

and

paleoanthropological Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship ...

sites, and proposed the first chronology for

Palaeolithic China This is a list of Paleolithic sites in China. They are sorted in chronological order from the earliest founding to the latest: List See also *History of China * List of Bronze Age sites in China *List of Neolithic cultures of China *List ...

. From the early 1990s, Chen pioneered and developed scientific methods to determine the geographical origins of ancient ceramics and porcelain. Chen published more than 30 papers in influential journals including ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans ar ...

'' and '' Acta Archaeologica Sinica''. He served as an editor of domestic and international journals including ''

Quaternary Science Reviews ''Quaternary Science Reviews'' is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering quaternary science. It was established in 1982 by Pergamon Press and is currently published by Elsevier. The editor-in-chief is C.V. Murray Wallace ( University of Wo ...

'' and ''

Quaternary Geochronology Quaternary geology is the branch of geology that study developments from 2.6 million years ago onwards. In particular, Quaternary geology study the process and deposits that developed during the Quaternary, a period characterized by glacial-interg ...

''. After retiring from Peking University, Chen dedicated himself to writing. He published the monographs ''Quantitative Archaeology'' (定量考古学) in 2005, ''Scientific Archaeology'' (科技考古学) in 2008, and ''Concise Statistics for Archaeology'' (简明考古统计学) in 2013.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chen, Tiemei 1935 births 2018 deaths Chinese archaeologists Physicists from Shanghai Peking University alumni Saint Petersburg State University alumni Academic staff of Peking University Academic staff of Dalian University of Technology Chinese expatriates in the Soviet Union Academic journal editors