Fang Lizhi

Fang Lizhi was born in Beijing and showed early brilliance in physics, graduating from Peking University at age twenty. During the 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign, Fang was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party for proposing democratic educational reforms and banished to rural labor. Reinstated, he made foundational contributions to laser physics and later pioneered relativistic cosmology and black hole thermodynamics in China.

By 1984, Fang was appointed Vice President of the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei. Utilizing his academic prestige, he gave electrifying open-air lectures across Chinese universities, boldly arguing that democracy was not a Western concession but a universal human entitlement born of scientific inquiry. His rhetoric inspired massive student demonstrations in December 1986 demanding electoral democracy and press freedom, prompting Deng Xiaoping to personally order Fang's dismissal and second expulsion from the Party.

In January 1989, Fang published an open letter to Deng Xiaoping urging the release of Wei Jingsheng and all political prisoners to commemorate the bicentenary of the French Revolution and the 70th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement. This letter sparked a surge of intellectual petitions that culminated in the Tiananmen protests. Following the bloody crackdown on 4 June 1989, Fang and his wife, Li Shuxian, were placed on China's most wanted list and took refuge in the US Embassy in Beijing. After thirteen months of intense diplomatic standoff, they were allowed safe passage to exile, where Fang resumed teaching astrophysics at the University of Arizona.