Tong Dizhou

Tong Dizhou (童第周) (May 28, 1902 – March 30, 1979) was a Chinese embryologist remembered for his contributions to the field of cloning. He was the former vice president of Chinese Academy of Science.

Dizhou Tong, also called Ti Chou Tung, studied marine animals and helped introduce and organize experimental embryology in China during the twentieth century. He introduced cellular nuclear transfer technology to the Chinese biological community, developed methods to clone organisms from many marine species, and investigated the role of cytoplasm in early development. Tong's administrative and scientific leadership in the fields of marine, cellular, and developmental biology contributed to China's experimental embryology research programs.

Tong was born in a village in Jin County, Zhejiang Province, China, on 28 May 1902. His father was a teacher in the village and was responsible for Tong's early education. Tong's father died when Tong was fourteen years old, leaving his mother to care for Tong and his six siblings. In 1918, at the age of 16, Tong enrolled in a school that trained primary school teachers. A year later Tong left to attend the Xiaoshi Middle School. At the age of seventeen, Tong was the oldest pupil in the class and in 1923 he graduated with the highest grade among his class. That year he entered Fudan University in Shanghai, China. Tong graduated with an undergraduate degree in psychology in 1927.

In 1927 Tong started work as an assistant to professor Bao Cai in the Department of Biology in National Central University in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China. Cai was a former teacher of Tong in Fudan University, and he hired Tong to work on embryology. In 1930, Tong married Yufen Ye, a biologist who later specialized in embryology. With financial support from his brothers, Tong started doctoral study in the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels, Belgium in 1930. There, Tong worked in the laboratory of Albert Brachet and Albert Dalcq, both of whom studied embryos. Tong studied the development of hairy sea squirts (Ascidiella scabra), a marine animal that grows on the ocean floor. Tong demonstrated that in hairy sea squirts, during the third division of cells in an embryo, cells divide unequally. Tong published his findings in the 1934 article "Research on the Potentials of Blastomeres in Ascidiella Scabra." Tong obtained his doctoral degree in biology from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles in 1934.

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