Zhu Kezhen

Zhu Kezhen was a Chinese meteorologist, geographer, and educator who served as president of National Chekiang University (now Zhejiang University) from 1936 to 1949, guiding the university through relocation and wartime hardship while building it into one of China's leading research universities. Trained in the United States at Illinois and Harvard, Zhu returned to China to found the country's first modern meteorological research programs and later directed the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Geography. As a university president he championed a broad liberal curriculum alongside scientific training, and his long-kept climate records and diaries remain a key source for the study of historical Chinese climate. He is remembered in China as a founding figure of modern scientific education and university administration.