Huang Liang (chemist)
Huang Liang (黄量) was a Chinese chemist and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She was born in Shanghai on May 22, 1920, and died in the United States on November 21, 2013, at age 93. She also served on multiple terms of China’s National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
Education and early work: Huang studied chemistry at St. John’s University in Shanghai, graduating in 1942. After a short stint at a Shanghai pharmaceutical factory, she taught at the Central Industrial Experimental Institute and at Shanghai Medical University. In 1946 she went to Cornell University in the United States, earning a PhD in organic chemistry in 1949. She later worked at Bryn Mawr College, Cornell, Wayne State University, and Iowa State University.
Return to China and leadership: She returned to China in 1956 and joined the Institute of Materia Medica, Chinese Academy of Medical Science (later part of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences). In 1960 she became director of the Drug Synthesis Room, a post she held until 1983. During the Cultural Revolution she was forced to work in the countryside rather than in the lab. In the 1990s, she and fellow chemist Dai Lixin led a major national project on chiral drugs under the Ninth Five-Year Plan.
Contributions: Huang guided research that produced Jiangya Ling, China’s first blood pressure–lowering drug. She was married to Liu Jinxu, an animal nutritionist.
Died in the United States on November 21, 2013, at the age of 93.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:08 (CET).