The Ocean University of China in this coastal city of east China's Shandong Province held a special ceremony to appoint Nobel laureate Samuel Chao Chung Ting, a Chinese-American physicist, as its honorary professor, on Tuesday.

Guan Huashi, president of the Ocean University of China, conferred copies of photos and archives of Samuel Ting's father, Ting Guanhai, on the days he spent in the university.

Guan praised Samuel Ting highly for his scientific achievements and said his university was honored to have Ting as its honorary professor.

The Ocean University is building a world-class national marine scientific and technological research center, demanding direction by scientists like Samuel Ting, Guan added.

Ting was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan on January 27, 1936, to a Chinese-American family. He obtained bachelor degree of science from Michigan University in 1959. He continued his education and got a master of science degree in 1960 and a doctor of philosophy in 1962. In 1963, he went to Geneva to do research through the European Organization of Nuclear Research with a subsidy from the Ford Foundation.

Coming back to the U.S., he entered Columbia University as an instructor of physics in 1964 and as an assistant professor from 1965 to 1967. During that time he headed a research group at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in the then West Germany. In 1967he began working as an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, becoming a full professor in 1969. He hasbeen a professor at the Thomas Dudley Cabot Institute since 1977.

Professor Ting received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976. He was elected as the first foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in June, 1994. In 1996, he was given the China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award.
 
(Xinhua News Agency June 23, 2005)