Minor Planet Center Names Two Asteroids After Late Chinese Scholar Couple

2 min readJul 25, 2018

Minor Planet Center Names Two Asteroids After Late Chinese Scholar Couple

(Yicai Global) July 24 — The Minor Planet Center has named two asteroids after a late Chinese academic couple in honor of their great contribution to the country.

The US-based globally authoritative body named the celestial bodies after Yung-huai Kuo, the first dean of the chemistry and physics department at the University of Science and Technology of China and his wife, Li Pei, known as the mother of China’s applied linguistics field, state-backed newspaper Beijing Youth Daily reported.

The MPC changed the names of Asteroid 212796 and Asteroid 212797 to Asteroid Yung-huai Kuo and Asteroid Li Pei, respectively.

Kuo was one of the leaders and organizers of China’s ‘Two Bombs, One Satellite’ program, as well as a trailblazer of the country’s modern mechanics field. He died in a plane crash in 1968. Li, who passed away last year, was an English professor and a pioneer in the establishment of applied linguistics in China.

The USTC and Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Purple Mountain Observatory jointly submitted an application to the International Astronomical Union earlier this year, proposing that two asteroids discovered by the PMO last October be named after the pair. The two celestial bodies were found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Editor: William Clegg

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