Hsiang-Tung Chang

Hsiang-Tung Chang (simplified Chinese: 张香桐; traditional Chinese: 張香桐; pinyin: Zhāng Xiāngtóng) (November 27, 1907 – November 4, 2007) was a renowned neurophysiologist of China and an academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He carried out fundamental studies on the structure and function of the central nervous system. Chang was one of the pioneers in the study of dendritic potentials and among the first to recognize the functional significance of dendrites in the central nervous system. He was the first to propose a fundamental distinction between axosomatic and axodendritic synapses. Chang was regarded as one of founders of China's neuroscience. He helped found Shanghai Institute of Brain Research of CAS (later Institute of Neuroscience of CAS).

Chang was born in Zhengding, Hebei Province. He graduated from the department of physiology of Peking University in 1933, and obtained a doctor of philosophy in physiology from Yale University in the United States in 1946. From 1948 to 1952, Chang was an assistant professor at Yale School of Medicine. From 1952 to 1956, Chang was an associate researcher at Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. After his return to China in late 1956, he served as a research fellow at Shanghai Institute of Physiology of CAS. He became the director of Shanghai Institute of Brain Research of CAS in 1980 and, since his retirement in 1984, the honorary director of the Institute.

Chang became foreign academician-elect of USSR Academy of Sciences in 1966, honorary foreign member of Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium in 1982 and honorary member of International Association for the Study of Pain in 1989. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from International Neural Network Society in 1993.