Hung Ta Chang (Hung-ta Chang, Zhang Hongda, 张宏达, October 1914 – 20 January 2016), was a Chinese botanist and ecologist.

Early life

Chang was born in October 1914 in Jiexi County of Guangdong Province, PR China. Chang died in January 2016 at the age of 101. He graduated from the Biology Department of Sun Yat-sen University in 1939, and stayed as an academic in the same University after that. He was a senior professor and Head of the Department. He was the President of the Ecological Society of Guangdong Province and the Botanical Society of Guangdong Province.Department of Human Resources, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University (2016). Deep Condolence on the Death of Professor Zhang Hongda. Sun Yatsen University News. Retrieved 26 January 2016.

Career

Chang was among the first group of professors qualified as Supervisors of PhD Students in China. He supervised over 100 masters, PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. He was the leader of Botany Discipline at Sun Yat-sen University after 1954. He established a Germany cooperation project and established a Rainforest Research Station in Bawangling, Hainan Province in 1987; and a Ministry of Education Tropical Subtropical Forest Ecosystem Experiment Station at the Heishiding of Guangdong in the same year.

Research achievements

He travelled to mountains all over China, including Guangdong, Guangxi, Hunan, Sichuan, and Yunnan Provinces. In plant taxonomy, he discovered 7 new plant genera and nearly 400 new plant species. He published 27 monographs and textbooks, and over 300 scientific papers. He was an expert on camellia flower and tea. Chang’s major contribution on botanical theory was the Cathaysian origin of flowering plants, which was published in 1980 on the journal of Sun Yat-sen University. His theory has been cited inside and outside China. In 1986, he proposed a classification system of seed plants, spermatophytes, and divided the Spermatophyta into 10 subdivisions, including the flowering plants Phanerogamophytina.

Awards and recognition

He contributed to 4 volumes of the Flora Republicae Popularis Sinicae, which was later translated into English as the Flora of China. The monograph series received the very prestigious China State Natural Science First Class Award in 2009, and he was one of the ten awardees. His work together with collaborators on chemotaxonomy of Murraya plants has received many citations over the years. He is included in Wikispecies.Hung_Ta_Chang. species.wikimedia.org. Retrieved 26 January 2016.

References

External links

Biography A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curri ...

Botany Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...

Ecology Ecology () is the natural science of the relationships among living organisms and their Natural environment, environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community (ecology), community, ecosystem, and biosphere lev ...

Scientist A scientist is a person who Scientific method, researches to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engag ...

Sun Yat-sen University Sun Yat-sen University (; SYSU) is a public university in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education, and co-funded by the Ministry of Education, SASTIND, and Guangdong Provincial Government. The university is p ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chang, Hung-ta 1914 births 2016 deaths 20th-century Chinese botanists Chinese men centenarians Biologists from Guangdong People from Jiexi Educators from Guangdong Academic staff of Sun Yat-sen University