China Vitae

Biography

Xu Zhiqin, female, Han nationality, is a native of Chongqing, Sichuan Province. She graduated from the Geology and Geography Department of Peking University in 1964 and obtained a doctorate degree from France National Geotectonic University in 1987. Xu is a structural geology expert.

Xu began her career studying rift structures. Since the 1980s, she has focused on new tectonic theories and examined the Qinghai-Tibet plateau as well as deformed structures of the peripheral Orogenic Belt. She also calibrated more than 50 large-scale malleable shear zones in China and divided the "tectonic types" of orogenic stages and continental mountain chains.

Xu put forward the "Tethys-Himalayan orogenic complex" and new views about the serious phorogenesis of western part of China since the Variscian period.

She is credited with discovering ultra-high pressure coesite minerals in the Zhonggubie Mountains and directed China's continental scientific drilling research team.

Xu was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1995.

Career Data