Hu Dunfu

Hu Dunfu (Chinese: 胡敦復; Wade–Giles: Hu Tun-fu; 1886 – December 1, 1978) was a Chinese mathematician and pioneer in higher education. He won a Qing government scholarship to study at Cornell University, and became the first dean of Tsinghua University at the age of 25. He was then briefly dean of Fudan University, before establishing Utopia University in 1912 and developing it into one of China's best private universities. He also served as head of the mathematics department of National Chiao Tung University and the first president of the Chinese Mathematical Society, which he co-founded in 1935.

Hu Dunfu was born in 1886 into a prominent family of scholar-officials in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, a descendant of the Song dynasty scholar and educator Hu Yuan (; 993–1059). When he was 11, he was accepted by the elementary school of Nanyang Public School (now Shanghai Jiao Tong University), and later attended its secondary school. When his teacher Ma Xiangbo left Nanyang to establish Aurora University and later Fudan University, Hu, together with Huang Yanpei and others, followed Ma and became the first students at Aurora and then Fudan.

In June 1907, Hu won a government scholarship to study in the United States, and entered Cornell University in September. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics in only two years, and returned to China in August 1909.

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