Su Buqing

Su Buqing studied at Tohoku University and Zhejiang Wenzhou High School. Hu Hesheng, Gu Chaohao and Chuan-Chih Hsiung are recorded as having studied under Su Buqing. The recorded working language is Chinese. Employment is recorded with Zhejiang University, National Taiwan University and Fudan University. Positions recorded include member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and National People's Congress deputy. Distinctions recorded are HLHL Science and Technology Achievement Award and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Su was born in Pingyang County, Zhejiang Province in 1902, with ancestry from Quanzhou. Su's academic journey began in 1911 when he transferred to the First Primary School in Pingyang County and was subsequently admitted to the Zhejiang Provincial Tenth Middle School in 1914. In 1919, Su was offered a scholarship by the principal of his middle school to study in Japan. Su successfully passed the entrance examination for Tokyo Higher Technical College in February 1920 and enrolled in the Department of Electrical Engineering where he graduated from in March 1924. After that, he was admitted to the Department of Mathematics of Tohoku Imperial University in Japan and graduated in 1927. Under the supervision of Tadahiko Kubota, Su received his Ph.D. from the university in 1931 for dissertation entitled The relation between affine and projective differential geometry. During his time in Tohoku Imperial University, Su met and married Yonako Matsumoto in 1928.

After returning to China, he first served as a professor and dean at Zhejiang University (he established the Chen-Su School with Chen Jiangong). When universities across China underwent reorganization in 1952, Su and his students from Zhejiang University's Department of Mathematics relocated to Fudan University where he initially served as the Provost and later became the honorary President of Fudan University in 1978. He was honorary chairman of the Chinese Mathematical Society (CMS) and elected to Academia Sinica and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1948 and 1955 respectively. In 1985, the Publicity Department of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee appointed Su as the honorary President of Wenzhou University. Additionally, he provided guidance and supervision in the establishment of the Shanghai Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics in 1989 and the China Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (CSIAM) in 1990, serving as a consultant for the latter. Some other positions Su held included member of the sixth (1983–88) and later vice chairman of the seventh and eighth (1988–98) National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), honorary chairman of the China Democratic League Central Committee (1997), and Conference and deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC).

Praised commonly in mathematical field as the "first geometer in the orient", Su was engaged in research, teaching and education in differential geometry and computational geometry. In his early years, he made excellent contributions to affine differential geometry and projective differential geometry. He obtained extraordinary achievements in general space differential geometry, conjugating net theory in higher-dimensional space and computer aided geometry design. Su's research on general surfaces led to the discovery of quartic algebraic surfaces of the third order. In recognition of his achievements, a geometric shape known as the "Su-cone" was named after him. In the 1940s, he made notable contributions to the theory of K-spreads, involving families of K-dimensional manifolds in space. Throughout his career, Su authored over 160 mathematical papers published in both domestic and international journals. He also wrote more than 20 monographs and textbooks on topics such as projective curves, projective surfaces, and affine differential geometry. Su's main papers are included in Selected Works of Buqing Su (1991). Notable among his works are "The General Projective Theory of Curves," (English translation 1958) "Affine Differential Geometry," (English translation 1983) and "Computational Geometry, Curve and Surface Modeling," (Chinese 1980; English edition 1989) co-authored with Dingyuan Liu.

He was employed by Zhejiang University, National Taiwan University and Fudan University. Recorded positions include member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and National People's Congress deputy. He belonged to Academia Sinica and Academic Division of Mathematics and Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Su Buqing is recorded as having received HLHL Science and Technology Achievement Award and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.