Foundation
The Physics Department of Fudan University was founded in 1952, seeded from the physics group in the former Department of Mathematics and Physics at Fudan. Under the nation-wide reorganizational effort within universities located close by, the physics departments of 8 universities in East China, including Fudan University, Jiaotong University, Tongji University, Zhejiang University, Hujiang University and Datong University, were partly merged into one department, the Physics Department of Fudan University.
In the past six decades, the Department has experienced a colorful and fruitful but hard and complicated course. It kept proliferation and fission, derived Physics Department II, Electronic Engineering Department, the Light and Illumination Department, the Material Science Department, and the Computer Science Department, making significant contributions to the growth and completeness of Fudan University. Meanwhile, the Department itself has been developing into one of the key centers for physics research and education in China.
Present Status
（1）Faculty
Present faculty of the Department mainly consists of 42 full professors and 23 associate professors, together with 22 technicians. Among the faculty members 6 are academicians of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 11 were awarded the National Funds for Distinguished Young, 4 were the chief scientist of the National Basic Research Program (973 Program) and 3 were awarded the “APS Fellow”. Many faculty members were and are in charge of different international academic and domestic organizations and were awarded important international and domestic Physics Awards.
（2）Main Fields and Achievements of Teaching and Research
Today, the Physics Department includes 3 academic subsidiary disciplines: (each is of both the national key discipline and doctorial cultivating unit): theoretical physics, condensed matter physics and optics, corresponding to each of them a specialty for graduate students is set up .Two specialties ,i.e. the physics and applied physics, are set up for undergraduate students. The Department runs 3 key labs: the State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Key Laboratory of Matter Computational Sciences and Key Laboratory of Micro-/Nano-Photonic Structure,the latter two are sponsored by the Ministry of Education. Main research fields of the faculty include atomic, molecular and optical physics, condensed matter physics, particle physics ,gravitation, cosmology and black hole physics , physical biology, and other physics related interdisciplines.
By the end of last year, of all the courses the Department opens up 5 have been chosen as national exquisite courses, 1 has been chosen as municipal exquisite course, 3 have been chosen as university exquisite courses. The Fudan Physics Teaching Lab has been chosen as National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center and the Civilized Team of Shanghai Education System.
The Department faculty had and have taken many national research projects. A number of valuable papers have been published by various international and domestic academic periodicals. Since 2006 the number of the papers published by the international leading professional journal Phys . Rev. Lett adds up to more than 30, while 6 papers have been published by most famous journal “Nature” and its related subsidiary periodicals such as Nature Materials,Nature Photonics,Nature Physics, etc. The faculty had been awarded a number of high level research awards such as Second Prize of National Natural Science Prize.
Training
Each year the Department enrolls about 100 undergraduate freshmen. This year (2012) the Department starts to try the “long cultivation system” for graduate students. It is expected to enroll 80-90 Ph.D. candidates each year. The Department will enroll directly the Bachelors as part of the 80-90 doctoral candidates , they will spend 5~7 years to finish the doctoral program, and will be referred to as direct doctoral candidates hereafter. Meanwhile the Department also enrolls the Masters as other doctoral candidates, and spends 3~5 years to cultivate them to finish their doctoral programs. These candidates will be referred to as regular doctoral candidates. The direct doctoral candidates are asked to be qualified before their status of doctoral candidate will be cancelled , otherwise they will be reconsidered and cultivated as the applicants for Master Degree rather than Doctoral Degree.
Many undergraduate students were awarded various prizes for students like “Challenge Cup” prize. Five graduated doctors have been the authors of “National Outstanding Doctoral Thesis”
Up to now the Department has cultivated more than 9000 students. They have distinguished themselves with their academic, educational, economic or governmental careers. More than 20 graduates have been elected as the academicians of Chinese Academy of Sciences or Chinese Academy of Engineering , two of them have been awarded the Oliver E.Buckley Prize.
