C.W. “Paul” Chu is a pioneer in the field of high-temperature superconductivity whose groundbreaking research has earned him global recognition.

Chu was born in Hunan, China, and received his bachelor of science from Cheng-Kung University in Taiwan. After service with the Nationalist Chinese Air Force, he earned his master of science from Fordham University and his doctorate at the University of California at San Diego. All three degrees were in physics.

After two years of industrial research with Bell Laboratories, Chu took an academic appointment at Cleveland State University. He stayed there for nine years. He assumed his appointment at the University of Houston in 1979.

At various times, he has served as a consultant and a visiting staff member at Bell Labs, Los Alamos National Lab, the Marshall Space Flight Center, Argonne National Lab and DuPont. He is the founding director of the Texas Center for Superconductivity at UH and serves as the center’s senior science adviser and president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Chu, UH’s T. L. L. Temple Chair of Science and professor of physics, is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Academia Sinica and the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World. He also was elected a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Engineering.

Chu has received numerous awards, including the 1988 National Medal of Science, the highest honor possible for a scientist in the United States, for his work on high-temperature superconductivity. The White House appointed Chu to be among 12 distinguished scientists who will evaluate National Medal of Science nominees.

Chu, who in 1990 was named Best Researcher in the United States by U.S. News and World Report magazine, will serve on the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science through 2009. He also has been awarded the Bernd Matthias Prize and the John Fritz Medal, which he holds with scienceand engineering icons such as Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison.