Hou Xun
Hou Xun (born December 6, 1936) is a Chinese optical physicist who specializes in optoelectronics. He is a research professor and was the director of the Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics from 1986 to 1995.
Born in Lingbao, Henan, with ancestral roots in Xianyang, Shaanxi, he graduated from Northwest University in Xi'an in 1959 with a physics degree. From 1960 to 1961 he did research under Wang Chengshu at the Institute of Nuclear Energy (now the China Institute of Atomic Energy). In March 1962 he began working at the Xi'an Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics (XIOPM).
From 1979 to 1981 he was a visiting scholar at Imperial College London, studying optics. In 1982 he became Deputy Director of XIOPM, and in June 1986 he was promoted to Director, serving until March 1995. He has been a professor at Northwest University and an adjunct professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University, the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), and South China Normal University.
His main research area is transient optics, the study of fast-changing light. He helped develop eight high-speed cameras used in nuclear tests. He was the chief scientist on a major ultrafast science project and invented the Pd-Ag-O-Cs photocathode. He has published more than 200 papers.
Hou Xun has won the State Science and Technology Progress Award three times and received the Ho Leung Ho Lee Prize for Technological Sciences. He was elected a fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1991.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 05:08 (CET).