Astrophysicist Fang Lizhi, who died at 76 on 6 April, was a champion of freedom human rights, and democracy in China. Fang began his academic career as a physics lecturer in 1958 at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Beijing, but his career was interrupted by compulsory labor on larms and in a coal mine during the Cultural Revolution. In 1976, Fang resumed publishing academic papers, and was elected at age 44 to the Chinese Academy of Sciences's Division of Mathematics and Physics in 1980. In 1984, he was appointed vice president of Ustc.
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