First, I and my wife send our heartfelt condolences to Xuejun’s relatives, Danqing’s relatives, to the President, administrators, faculty, staff and students of the Xi’an Jiaotong University, and to you.

I first met with Xuejun in 1979, when he attended our Two-Phase Flows Conference in Miami Beach, Florida, USA. In the second day of the conference, he invited me to a dinner in a Chinese restaurant near the conference site. He told me that during the Gang of Four in China, they closhed all the universities and research centers, and sent the professors to villages to work in the farms. The higher education was ruined in China. However, now that the Gang of Four has been replaced by a  progressive government, they were going to reestablish the universities and research centers. He was going to do his best to make Xi’an Jiaotong University to be one of the best universities in China. He proposed that we should have a special relationship between the Clean Energy Research Institute of the University of Miami and Xi’an Jiaotong University in order to assist him in his mission. I readily agreed. In 1980, I went to China to give lectures in the TsinghuaUniversity in Bejing, ShanghaiJiaotong University and Xi’an Jiaotong University. My talks were translated into Chinese. Two years later, when I gave a talk in Xi’an Jiaotong University, there was no translator. They told me that in 2 years all the faculty and the students learned English, and therefore there was not need for a translator!

We organized several conferences in Xi’an on heat transfer, two-phase flows and hydrogen energy, bringing World famous scientists to Xi’an Jiaotong University. Xuejun sent some graduate students to our Clean Energy Research Institute in Miami to work on two-phase flows and hydrogen energy. He was also advising the central government in Beijing for reestablishing and improving the other universities and research centers in China.

Xuejun, during his lifetime, observed the results of his efforts: Xi’an Jiaotong University – as well as many other universities in China –  became First Class Universities in the World, the scientists and engineers they produced converted China from an agricultural society to an Industrial Country - the second biggest economy in the World, soon to become the number one economy. Therefore, Xuejun now is resting in Heavens happily with the blessings of his relatives, friends, colleagues, students and loved ones!

Dr. V. T. Nejat Veziroglu

President, International Association for Hydrogen Energy