Hou Debang

He was born in Taijiang District of Fuzhou (then known as Houguan County).

Graduating from Tsinghua Preparatory School in 1912, Hou was one of the scholars sent to the United States to study modern technologies.

In 1957 he joined the Chinese Communist Party and in 1959 was appointed minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China.

Among Hou's discoveries was his 1933 improvement to the Solvay process for producing sodium carbonate.

[2] On August 26, 1974, already ill from leukemia, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died.