Biology is one of the oldest disciplines at PKU, which originated from the Imperial University of Peking (founded in 1898), the first national comprehensive university in China.
The Department of Biology at PKU was established in 1925 with Botany and Zoology as majors. After merging with two other leading Biology departments in 1952, the Department of Biology of Yenching University (established in 1923) and the Department of Biology of Tsinghua University (established in 1927), a wide spectrum of subjects was gradually added to the initial majors, including Plant Physiology, Animal Physiology and Animal Genetics in the early 1950s, Biochemistry and Biophysics in 1956, Cell Biology, Microbiology, Environmental Biology and Ecology in 1980s, and Biotechnology in 1993. The Department of Biology was reorganized as the School of Life Sciences (SLS) in 1993 to meet the needs of rapid development, expansion, and interdisciplinary collaborations in life sciences.
Faculty members are the foundation and the driving force of our school. Thus it is with the great effort and commitment of generations of our faculty, the Department of Biology, now the SLS, has been playing a leading role in education and basic research in China. In 1898, Mr. Fu Yan (1854-1921), the founding President of PKU introduced Darwinism to China by translating Thomas H. Huxley’s “Evolution & Ethics” into Chinese. In 1924, Professor Kuan Kuang Tsoong established the first biological specimen collection in China. In 1948, biostatistician Ching Chun Li published in English his textbook, “An Introduction to Population Genetics”, one of the few textbooks written by Chinese academics that had a major impact in the Western scientific community. In our early days, three graduate students supervised by Dr. T. H. Morgan, the founder of modern genetics, contributed to the Department of Biology: among them, Prof. Ju-Chi Li, who received his Ph.D. training from Dr. Morgan, taught at Peking University until his retirement, and is considered one of the founders of genetics in China.
Students represent the character of our school. Since 1952, approximately 8400 undergraduates and 2600 graduate students have received their education and training in Biology at PKU. Among them are the former President of the PKU, the former Director of the Chinese National Sciences Foundation, members of Chinese Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Sciences, leaders in education, research, biotech/pharmaceutical industries, as well as in business sectors. Our alumni have continuously taken direct or indirect roles in building life sciences at PKU.
