Shen Shanjiong

On 26 March 2021, he died of illness in Shanghai, aged 103.

Shen developed aureomycin in 1957, making China the fourth country in the world to produce aureomycin.

In 1947, he pursued advanced studies in the United States, first earning a doctor's degree in molecular genetics from California Institute of Technology in 1950 and then carried out postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin. He returned to China after the outbreak of the Korean War. In November 1950, he became an associate professor at the School of Medicine, Zhejiang University. In 1952, he was transferred to the Chinese Academy of Sciences as an associate research fellow and was promoted to research fellow in 1956. Since 1980, he was a visiting professor at California Institute of Technology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, and Boston Biomedical Research Institute. In 1984, he was hired as an honorary professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, helping to set up the Department of Biological Science and Technology.

In 1944, he became an instructor at Huazhong University. The next year, he worked as an assistant researcher at the Institute of Botany, Academia Sinica, in Beibei, Sichuan (now Beibei District of Chongqing), under the introduction of Zhang Jingyue (张景钺). In 1946, he was appointed an assistant of the Department of Botany, Peking University.

Shen Shanjiong (Chinese: 沈善炯; pinyin: Shěn Shànjiǒng; 13 April 1917 – 26 March 2021) was a Chinese microbiologist and geneticist. He was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Shen was born into a family of farming background in Wujiang County, Jiangsu, on 13 April 1917. He attended Tailaiqiao School (泰来桥初级小学) and Tongli School (同里高级小学). After graduating from Wujiang Middle School (吴江中学), he was accepted to Suzhou Agricultural School. In 1937, he was admitted to the University of Nanking. In the summer of the same year, he studied at the Agricultural College of Guangxi University due to the Second Sino-Japanese War. In 1939, he transferred to the National Southwestern Associated University, where he studied fungus under Dai Fanglan (戴芳澜).