C. C. Li

In this Chinese name, the family name is Li (李). Ching Chun Li (Chinese: 李景均; pinyin: Lǐ Jǐngjūn; October 27, 1912 – October 20, 2003) was a Chinese-American population geneticist and human geneticist.^[1] He was known for his research and the book An Introduction to Population Genetics.

Biography

Ching Chun Li was born on October 27, 1912, in Taku (Chinese: 大沽口), Tianjin, China. He received his BS degree in agronomy from the University of Nanking in 1936 and a PhD in plant breeding and genetics from Cornell University in 1940. He worked as post-doctorate fellows at Columbia University and North Carolina State University from 1940 to 1941.

Li returned to China at the age of 30 and became the Professor of Genetics and Biometry at University of Nanking, his alma mater, in 1943. After World War II, he moved to Beijing for a Professorship and dean of Agronomy at Peking University in 1946, where he finished An Introduction to Population Genetics in 1948. The book was the first notable publication where a combination of the ideas of Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, and J. B. S. Haldane about population genetics was brought to and made understandable to the academia.^[1]

Li became persona non grata for publishing and teaching theory of genes following the 1949 establishment of a Communist government in Mainland China. The new government took the diplomatic policy of "Leaning to One Side" and adopted Soviet thought and action, including the genetic thought of the Soviet pseudoscientist Trofim Lysenko, who was standing against Mendel genetics.^[2] In 1949, Li was appointed as a professor in the Peking Agricultural University (now China Agricultural University), which was newly founded by combining Agronomy at Peking University, Agronomy at Tsinghua University, and Agronomy at Huabei University. Li was propersecuted by the party branch secretary of the Peking Agricultural University, Tianyu Le, because of Li's defense of genetics.^[1] In 1950, Li fled with his family to Hong Kong, where he was trapped without documentation of citizenship and unable to obtain a visa. Friends and colleagues, particularly Nobel laureate H. J. Muller and sixth Surgeon General of the United States T. Parran assisted Dr. Li's emigration to US.^[3] Li joined newly founded Pitt's School of Public Health (GSPH) in 1951, became the professor of biometry in 1960, and headed the biostatistics department of GSPH from 1969 to 1975. He also served as the president of the American Society of Human Genetics in 1960.^[4] After his official retirement in 1982, he still published another 25 papers and continued to go to his office every day until a few months before his death in 2003.^[5]

Bibliography

Original reports

• Li, C.C. (1953). "On an equation specifying equilibrium populations". Science 117 (3041): 378–379. doi:10.1126/science.117.3041.378. PMID 13048687. Bibcode: 1953Sci...117..378L. 
• Li, C.C. (1953). "Some general properties of recessive inheritance". Am J Hum Genet 5 (3): 269–279. PMID 13080252. 
• Li, C.C. (1958). "An introduction to genetic statistics". Am J Hum Genet 10 (1): 72–75. 
• Li, C.C. (1960). "Biometrics". McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. 1. pp. 223–232. 
• Li, C.C. (1962). "Methodology in human genetics". Science 138: 807–808. doi:10.1126/science.138.3542.807-a. 
• Li, C.C.. "Environment changes: The implications for health from the viewpoint of a geneticist". National Health Forum 1964: 79–83. 

Books

• Li, C.C.: Introduction to Population Genetics National Peking University Press. 1948.
• Li, C.C.: "Heredity and its Variability (by T.D. Lysenko)" Chinese translation, New China Book Co. 1949.
• Li, C.C.: "Soviet Genetics and World Science (by Julian Huxley)" Chinese translation, Taipei, Taiwan. 1953.
• Li, C.C.: Population Genetics University of Chicago Press. 1955. 7th Impression 1972.
• Li, C.C.: "Numbers from Experiments" Boxwood Press. 1959.
• Li, C.C.: Human Genetics Principles and Methods McGraw-Hill Book Co. 1961.
• Li, C.C.: "Introduction to Experimental Statistics" McGraw-Hill Book Co. 1964.
• Li, C.C.: "Path Analysis: A Primer" Boxwood Press. 1975. 2nd printing with corrections 1977. 3rd printing with corrections 1981.
• Li, C.C.: "First Course in Population Genetics" Boxwood Press. 1976.
• Li, C.C.: "Analysis of unbalanced data: A pre-program introduction" Cambridge University Press. 1982.

References

External links

• Partha P. Majumder, "C. C. Li (1912–2003): his science and his spirit", in Journal of Genetics, Vol. 83, No. 1, April 2004, pp. 101–105.
• Pittsburgh Gazette obituary

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