On March 25, 2003, Zhejiang University held a ceremony awarding an honorary doctorate to Dr. Chengtong Qiu, after approval from the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, China. Dr. Qiu is the forth renowned person, after Drs. Yifu Shao, Guangbiao Cao and Kofi Annan, holding the highest honorary degree of Zhejiang University.

Dr. Chengtong Qiu was born at Shantou, Guangdong, in 1949, and moved to HongKong with his family in his childhood, and then got a doctoral degree at University of California Berkeley at his twenty-two years. He is one of the world renowned Chinese mathematician and a world expert in differential geometry. He is the first Chinese to have won the Fields Prize, known as the highest award in mathematics. He teaches at Harvard University in the United States and is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Last year Professor Qiu was invited to serve as a director of the Research Center of Mathematical Sciences, Zhejiang University.