Published : 2025-07-24
On July 24, 2020, Zheng Shouren (鄭守仁), chief engineer of Three Gorges Dam project and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) passed away at the age of 81.
Zheng Shouren was born in 1940, and he was a native of Yingshang, Fuyang City, Anhui Province.
In 1986, Zheng was appointed deputy chief engineer of the Yangtze River Basin Planning Office (now the Yangtze River Commission) and director of the Geheyan Design Representative Office.
In 1994, he became the chief engineer of the Yangtze River Commission and director of the Three Gorges Project Representative Office.
Later in 1997, Zheng Shouren was elected as an academician of the CAE.
In 2003, he served as the chairman of the Science and Technology Committee of the Yangtze River Commission, and he retired in 2019.
Over his 57-year career in water conservancy, Zheng Shouren was responsible for the diversion and closure design of the Wujiangdu (烏江渡) and Gezhouba (葛洲壩) hydropower stations, as well as the full-cycle on-site design of projects like the Geheyan (隔河岩) Dam.
He also led the design, on-site surveying, and research for the Three Gorges Project—a monumental national undertaking.
Zheng Shouren received numerous awards, with his project designs winning more than 40 provincial and ministerial level awards.
He also received the national "May 1 Labor Medal" and the "Three Gorges Science and Technology Innovation Lifetime Achievement Award" among other honours.
In July 2017, Zheng Shouren was awarded the ICOLD Lifetime Achievement Award, the highest honour in the international dam engineering community.
Zheng possessed a rigorous and diligent spirit of exploration, committed to innovation and seeking truth from facts. He made outstanding contributions to promoting the research of key technologies in Yangtze River water conservancy projects.
Taking the Three Gorges Dam project as an example, since he was fully responsible for the design of the Three Gorges Dam project, Zheng Shouren successfully solved the worldwide problem of closing off the Yangtze River in 1994, 1997, and 2002, and addressed significant issues such as ultra-deep water and soft silt, and achieving the world record in energy output per unit width for the closure of Longkou.
This saved the country huge investments and advanced the project timeline, achieving great economic and social benefits.
Zheng Shouren presided over more than 2,500 on-site design discussion meetings for the Three Gorges Project and personally wrote over 500 on-site design work reports, totalling more than 4 million words. His meticulous work laid a solid foundation for ensuring the design and construction quality of the project.
In addition, Zheng dedicated his life to researching and disseminating key technologies in water conservancy engineering, authoring over 50 academic papers and six monographs.
