Huang Kun (1919.09-2005.07) is a native of Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province. Huang was a solid-state and semiconductor physicist. He graduated from Yanching University in 1941. He received his doctorate from Bristol University in Britain in 1948. He worked as full-time professor at Physics Department of Peking University from 1951 to 1977. After 1977, he was director of the Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since 1983 he had been the Honorary Director of the Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Huang Kun was elected academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1955, a foreign academician of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1980, and of the Third World Academy of Sciences in 1985. 

His research is focused on solid state physics theory and semiconductor physics. Professor Huang is one of the original researchers on semiconductor physics in China and has produced several world-renowned advancements in the field. In the 1950s, he and his colleagues established the "Huang-Rhys Theory", the quantum theory on the radiative and nonradiative multiphonon transition processes. He was the first to propose the coupled vibration pattern of phonon and EMW, which was named "Huang Equation". With a pair of equations advanced by him, he was succeeded in coupling optical displacement, macroscopic electric field and electric polarization, and discovered, for the first time, the coupled vibratory modes between optical vibration and the electromagnetic field, which later developed to become the new concept of "polariton". He was also the first to predict X-ray diffuse scattering due to crystal defects in crystalline lattice. The prediction has been honored as "Huang Diffuse Scattering", which has developed into a method for studying micro-defects in solids. He proved the equivalence between the adiabatic approximation of radiation-free transition and the static coupling theory, and clarified some essential problems about the issue. In collaboration with Max Born, he is widely known as the co-author of the famous book of "Dynamical Theory of Crystal Lattices", which has left its long-term imprint on the solid-state physics. He had also achieved remarkable success with his colleagues in the electronic states and phonon modes of semiconductor superlattices. Huang was awarded the prize of Ho Leung Ho Lee Award for Scientific and Technological Achievement in 1995. He was awarded State Preeminent Scientific and Technological Award in 2001.