Wei Baowen, a leading figure in China’s nuclear and accelerator physics community, died in Lanzhou on 17 January 2026 at 19:25 after a prolonged illness. An academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a Communist Party member, Wei had a long career building the institutions and infrastructure that undergirded China’s heavy-ion research.
Over several decades Wei combined scientific leadership with large-scale engineering management. He served as chief engineer of what Chinese authorities call the country’s first heavy‑ion accelerator major-science facility, and he was director of the Lanzhou Heavy Ion Accelerator National Laboratory. He also led the Institute of Modern Physics and the Lanzhou branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, roles that placed him at the center of national efforts to develop accelerator-based nuclear science.
Those positions made Wei an architect of China’s move into big‑science accelerators. Heavy‑ion facilities are central to contemporary nuclear physics, materials research and certain medical and isotope-production capabilities. Under Wei’s stewardship the Lanzhou institutions matured from research groups into national laboratories able to host complex accelerator projects and train the next generation of experimentalists and engineers.
Wei’s influence extended beyond the laboratory. He was a delegate to the Eighth National People’s Congress and served on the standing committee of the Gansu provincial people's congress for two terms, reflecting the close institutional ties between China’s scientific elite and the state. His dual roles as scientist and administrator exemplify how Beijing has historically marshalled political support for major scientific endeavours.
The passing of Wei, at the age of 91, punctuates the gradual transition of Chinese science from the generation that built its post‑1949 research base to a newer cohort leading high‑tech and big‑science programmes. While the institutions he helped found continue to operate and expand, his death removes one of the senior figures who carried tacit knowledge about early accelerator design, project coordination and the interplay between research and state priorities.
For international observers, Wei’s career is a reminder that China’s capabilities in nuclear and accelerator science rest on long-term investments and institutional continuity. Projects initiated during his era have evolved into more ambitious programmes and are likely to remain central to China’s scientific and strategic posture, from fundamental physics to applied uses in industry and medicine.
Colleagues and institutions will mark his death as the loss of a builder and mentor. The immediate consequence for ongoing projects is unlikely to be operational disruption, but his absence will be felt in matters of high-level guidance, advocacy and the transmission of institutional memory. China’s accelerator community now faces the task of ensuring that the next generation inherits both the technical capacity and the organizational know‑how Wei helped assemble.