Foundation

The Physics Department of Fudan University was founded in 1952, seeded from the physics group in the former Department of Mathematics and Physics at Fudan. Under the nation-wide reorganizational effort within universities located close by, the physics departments of 8 universities in East China, including Fudan University, Jiaotong University, Tongji University, Zhejiang University, Hujiang University and Datong University, were partly merged into one department, the Physics Department of Fudan University.

In the past seven decades, the Department has experienced a colorful and fruitful but hard and complicated course. It kept proliferation and fission, derived Physics Department II, Electronic Engineering Department, the Light and Illumination Department, the Material Science Department, and the Computer Science Department, making significant contributions to the growth and completeness of Fudan University. Meanwhile, the Department itself has been developing into one of the key centers for physics research and education in China. 

Present Status

（1）Faculty

The present faculty of the Department mainly consists of 73 full professors and 17 associate professors, together with 14 technicians. Among the faculty members 9 are academicians of Chinese Academy of Sciences, 25 were awarded the National Funds for Distinguished Young, 5 were the chief scientists of the National Basic Research Program (973 Program), 4 were the leaders of the National Key R&D Program, 11 were awarded the "APS Fellow", and 1 was awarded the "OSA Fellow". Many faculty members were and are in charge of different international academic and domestic organizations and were awarded important international and domestic Physics Awards.

（2）Main Fields and Achievements of Teaching and Research

Today, the Physics Department includes 6 academic subsidiary disciplines: (each is both a national key discipline and a doctoral cultivating unit): Condensed Matter Physics, Atomic, Molecular & Optical Physics, Theoretical Physics, Computational Physics, Particle & Nuclear Physics, and Astrophysics. Corresponding to each of them a specialty for graduate students is set up. The Department runs 3 key labs: the State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Key Laboratory of Matter Computational Sciences and Key Laboratory of Micro-/Nano-Photonic Structure, the latter two are sponsored by the Ministry of Education. Main research fields of the faculty include atomic, molecular and optical physics, condensed matter physics, particle physics, gravitation, cosmology and black hole physics, physical biology, and other physics-related interdisciplines.

By the end of last year, of all the courses the Department opened up 5 have been chosen as national exquisite courses, 1 has been chosen as municipal exquisite course, 3 have been chosen as university exquisite courses. The Fudan Physics Teaching Lab has been chosen as National Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center and the Civilized Team of Shanghai Education System.

As of 2025, 8 courses that the Department opens up have been awarded as national exquisite courses and first-class undergraduate courses, and has received four second prizes for national teaching achievements.

The Department faculty have taken many national research projects. A number of valuable papers have been published by various international and domestic academic periodicals. Since 2012 the number of papers published by the international leading professional journal Phys. Rev. Lett adds up to more than 130, while 13 papers have been published by the most famous journals "Nature" and "Science", more than 140 papers have been published by the related subsidiary periodicals such as Nature Materials, Nature Photonics, Nature Physics, etc. The faculty have been awarded a number of high level research awards such as Second Prize of National Natural Science Prize.

Training

Each year the Department enrolls about 100 undergraduate freshmen. Since 2012, the Department has begun to implement the "long cultivation system" for graduate students. It is expected to enroll about 120 Ph.D. candidates each year. The Department will enroll directly the Bachelors as part of the 120 doctoral candidates, they will spend 5~7 years to finish the doctoral program, and will be referred to as direct doctoral candidates hereafter. Meanwhile the Department also enrolls Masters as other doctoral candidates, and spends 3~5 years to cultivate them to finish their doctoral programs. These candidates will be referred to as regular doctoral candidates. The direct doctoral candidates are asked to be qualified before their status of doctoral candidate will be cancelled, otherwise they will be reconsidered and cultivated as the applicants for Master's Degree rather than Doctoral Degree.

Many undergraduate students were awarded various prizes for students like the "Challenge Cup" prize. Five graduated doctors have been the authors of the "National Outstanding Doctoral Thesis".

Up to now the Department has cultivated more than 10,000 students. They have distinguished themselves with their academic, educational, economic or governmental careers. More than 30 graduates have been elected as the academicians of Chinese Academy of Sciences or Chinese Academy of Engineering.