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- Director of the Nuclear Weapons Program Marshal Nie Rongzhen, 1899
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Nie Rongzhen (simplified Chinese: 聂荣臻; traditional Chinese: 聶榮臻; December 29, 1899 - May 14, 1992) was a prominent Chinese Communist military leader, and one of ten Marshals in the People's Liberation Army of China. He was the last surviving PLA officer with the rank of Marshal.
Nie was born in Jiangjin county in Sichuan (now belongs to Chongqing), near Chongqing, the cosmopolitan and well educated son of a wealthy family. In his 20s, Nie applied to a Belgian university "Universite du travail", located in Charleroi (Belgium), with a scholarship from the Socialist Party to be able to study science in Charleroi. Zhou Enlai spent one night in Charleroi and Nie finally met him there. Finally, Nie accepted to join the group of Chinese students in France on a work - study program, where he studied engineering and became a protégé of Zhou Enlai. Zhou recruited him in 1921 when Nie was performing technical - scientific studies in Belgium, and he joined the Communist Party in 1923.
A graduate of the Soviet Red Army Military College and Whampoa Academy, Nie spent his early career first as a political officer in Whampoa's Political Department, where Zhou served as the Deputy Director, and in the Chinese Red Army. During the Second Sino - Japanese War, he was first assigned as the deputy division commander of the 115th division of the Eighth Route Army, with the commander being Lin Biao, and in the late 1930s he was given a field command close to Yan Xishan's Shanxi stronghold.
In the Chinese Civil War he commanded the Northern China Military Region, and with his deputy Xu Xiangqian, his force defeated Fu Zuoyi's forces in Tianjin near Beijing.
During the Korean War, Nie took part in high command decision making, military operations planning, and shared responsibility for war mobilization. Nie was made a Marshal of the PLA in 1955 and later ran the Chinese nuclear weapons program. He was purged during the Cultural Revolution. Nie re-emerged from the Cultural Revolution and became vice chairman of the Military Central Committee, which controlled the nation's armed forces, and also became the vice chairman of the National People's Congress. He retired in 1987 and died in Beijing.