Ching Chun Li was born on October 27, 1912, in Tianjin, China. He received
his B.S. degree in agronomy from the University of Nanjing, China, in 1936
and a Ph.D. in plant breeding and genetics from Cornell University in 1940.
He did postgraduate work in mathematics, mathematical statistics and exper
imental statistics at the University of Chicago, Columbia University and No
rth Carolina State College, 1940-1941. He is a Fellow of the American Stati
stical Association (elected 1969), an elected member of the International S
tatistical Institute, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancem
ent of Science and an elected member of Academia Sinica (Chinese Academy).
He served as President of the American Society of Human Genetics in 1960. H
is tenure at the University of Pittsburgh began in 1951. He was Professor a
nd Department Chairman, Biostatistics, from 1969 to 1975, and he was promot
ed to University Professor in 1975. Although he retired in 1983, he has rem
ained active in research.