Yuan-Cheng Fung

Yuan-Cheng Fung, known as Bert Fung (1919 to 2019), was a Chinese-American bioengineer and writer regarded as a founding figure of bioengineering and tissue engineering and as the founder of modern biomechanics. Born in Jiangsu Province, he studied at National Central University and earned his doctorate at the California Institute of Technology in 1948, later serving as professor emeritus and research engineer at the University of California San Diego. He wrote influential texts including Foundations of Solid Mechanics and Continuum Mechanics and a series of books on biomechanics, helped found the Journal of Biomechanics and in 1972 established the Biomechanics Symposium of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. His exponential strain equation for preconditioned soft tissues is known as Fung's law, and he received the National Medal of Science in 2000.