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OFFICE OF THE DEAN – JACOBS SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING
OFFICE OF THE CHAIR – DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL AND AEROSPACE ENGINEERING
December 11, 2020
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ALL ACADEMICS AND STAFF AT UC SAN DIEGO
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Passing of Professor Emeritus of Engineering Shao-Chin Lin
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Shao-Chin Lin, Professor Emeritus of Engineering, died on October 8, 2020 at the age of 95. He is remembered by former students and colleagues as a talented and caring teacher, mentor and researcher; and an active member of the campus community.
Lin was an internationally renowned engineer who specialized in gas dynamics, which has applications in many areas including the re-entry of spacecraft into earth's atmosphere after space travel.
Lin was born in Guangzhou, China on January 5, 1925. He earned his undergraduate degree from National Central University in Chongqing, China in 1946. He went on to earn a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from Cornell University in 1952, under the guidance of professor Arthur Kantrowitz. Lin worked for a company founded by Kantrowitz called Avco-Everett Research Lab (AERL) in Everett, Massachusetts as a principal research scientist from 1955 to 1964.
Lin was an experimentalist who had excellent theoretical understanding, which is a powerful combination. Lin's dual strengths in theory and experimentation fed his passion for making real-world impacts through research, teaching, and mentorship.
UC San Diego professor Sol Penner recruited Lin to UC San Diego in 1964, where he joined the newly formed Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Sciences (AMES) Department as a professor of engineering physics.
Lin taught and mentored many UC San Diego students over the years. Two students who earned PhDs under his guidance, and who were driven, like Lin, by a desire to make real-world impacts, are Robert Akins BA ’74, M.S. ’77, Ph.D. ’83, and Richard Sandstrom, BA ’72, M.S. ’76, Ph.D. ’79.
Grounded in expertise on excimer lasers that were part of Lin's research program at UC San Diego, Akins and Sandstrom founded Cymer. This San Diego based company grew to lead the world in the design and manufacture of laser light sources used for making computer chips for computers, phones and many other electronic devices.
In a UC San Diego alumni magazine profile, Akins and Sandstrom cite the research laboratory run by Lin, where they collaborated together for years, as particularly impactful to their futures. They remember Lin as an incredibly talented physicist and engineer with an entrepreneurial spirit. They went on to model their meetings at Cymer after the meetings that Lin conducted at UC San Diego.
In 2012, Lin and his wife Lily helped to found the 21st Century China Center in the School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) at UC San Diego. He was proud of the role the Center plays in bridging the understanding between the Chinese and American people.
Outside the laboratory, Lin and Lily lived an active and full life. Ballroom dancing, downhill skiing, and travel were shared passions. They took annual January ski trips together until Lin turned 90. He also maintained a pilot's license. Shao-Chin and Lily were actively engaged with the Friends of the International Center at UC San Diego for many years.
Gifts to honor Shao-Chin Lin can be made to the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Excellence and Innovation Fund (E3889) at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.
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Albert P. Pisano
Dean, Jacobs School of Engineering
George R. Tynan
Professor and Chair, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
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