Academician Song Daxiang (1935--2008)

Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Zoologist

In 1953, Song Dxiang graduated from the Department of Biology, Jiangsu Normal University. In 1957, he was admitted by the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, studying carcinology. After graduating in 1961, he worked as a deputy director of the Institute of Zoology, director of the Invertebrate Zoology Laboratory and a member of the Academic Committee and Academic Degree Committee. He came to work in Hebei University in 1999 and was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the same year. Since then, he became the first academician trained by Hebei Province.

In the 1960s and 1970s, he has been engaged in the classification of pedigrees of cladocera, freshwater and parasitic. Then he worked with arachnid research since the late 1970s. He has visited the natural museums and scientific research institutions of France, the United States, Germany, South Korea, Japan and other countries for research and cooperation. Through his research and cooperation with his peers, the research on arachnid in China has caught up with the international advanced level as soon as possible. He actively promoted the establishment of the Chinese arachnid academy and the publication of theJournal of Arachnids, making important contributions to the development of arachnids in China and the establishment of modern spider studies in China.

He has presided over or participated in the preparation of more than 20 monographs and reference books, and published about 200 papers (10 of which were published in American, Japanese, German, and Korean academic journals).China Freshwater FootandFarmland Spiderwon the second and third prizes of the Academy of Sciences respectively. He hosted a key project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the research on animal resources in Southwest China during the period of the Seventh Five-Year Plan and engaged in the study of the soil animals in China, geographical distribution of animals and the evolution of the arachnid system, as well as the preparation of the Chinese zoology (Thomisidae) during the Eighth Five-Year Plan period. While participating in leading the preparation of Chinese animal records, he also presided over China's zoology development strategy research (completed draft), as well as the validation of zoology nouns (more than 6,000 completed trials) and he was one of the academic leaders of zoology in China.