Yang Shixian was a famous educator and chemist in China. Born on January 8, 1897 in Hangzhou, he entered his family's school at the age of five and moved to Tianjin with his family at the age of eleven, where he completed elementary school. At thirteen, he entered the newly established Tsinghua University Preparatory School for International Students, the predecessor of Tsinghua University, where he received a complete secondary education and primary higher education.

Yang Shixian's health deteriorated as a result of his diligent studies. At that time, Zhou Yichun, the President of Tsinghua University, noticed the students’ lack of fitness and made it mandatory for them to exercise. During an inspection, Zhou Yichun found Yang Shixian hiding in a secluded area and reading a book. Why did you break the school rules? When confronted with the question, Yang Shixian was speechless. What’s your aspiration? “I want to be a scientist and use scientific knowledge and technology to save the country.” Zhou Yichun replied, with sincere words and earnest wishes, “Your ambition is admirable. But I am afraid it will be difficult for you to realize. If you don't like exercising, how will you be able to endure the strain? How can you save the country if you can't even serve it after completing your studies?” Yang Shixian was deeply impressed and continued to exercise from then on, which made him fall in love with playing basketball and climbing mountains.

After eight years of painstaking study, he finished his studies at Tsinghua University with excellent grades. In the summer of 1918, he left his homeland to study in the United States and entered Cornell University, where he studied agriculture, the most prestigious major at Cornell. Yang Shixian decided to change his major to chemistry later. This decision was motivated by a realization that chemistry was becoming increasingly important in human life, and the progress of agriculture was inseparable from the achievements of applied chemistry.

In a foreign land, he was often worried about the weakness of his motherland. Thinking about the future of his country, he studied harder and harder, often walking into a classroom, library, or laboratory with a simple lunch and not leaving until nearly midnight. He was always in the top three of his class in all subjects. In 1923, when there was only one year left for him to complete his doctoral degree, due to family issues, he had to accept his tutor's suggestion and used the completed part of his thesis to pass the master's degree examinations before leaving for China.

On the ship back, he first met Li Ji, his classmate at Tsinghua University, who had become a renowned expert in anthropology and Yinxu archaeology. Li had already received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and was employed at Nankai University. He told Yang, “President Zhang Boling of Nankai is running an excellent school. And there is a shortage of chemistry professors.” Although he had already been recommended to go to Zhejiang University, he chose the private Nankai University, which was less influenced by the government, as the starting point for his pursuit of education to save the country, even though his salary there was meager.

At Nankai, Yang Shixian worked closely with Professor Qiu Zongyue. They were responsible for the teaching of chemistry at the university, winning the trust of the university and the admiration of the students. In 1929, he was sponsored by the university to go to the United States again for further study. He was elected as an honorary member of the American Society for Scientific Research because of his outstanding achievements in the research on heterocyclic compounds synthesis when he worked as a researcher at Yale University. After receiving his PhD  in chemistry in 1931, he traveled to Europe, where he visited many famous universities. In Germany, he declined the offer to stay offered by Professor Wieland, the Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, and returned to his homeland to continue teaching at Nankai University.

How to make the Department of Chemistry of Nankai be one of the best academic departments in China? He believed that the parallel development of various disciplines would not result in Nankai being outstanding compared with other famous universities, and that the Department of Chemistry of Nankai should develop its own characteristics to make it more impressive in the next few years. After meticulous analysis and comparison, he proposed a development direction focusing on organic chemistry, which was supported by Professor Qiu Zongyue, the head of the department. Subsequently, they hired a number of professors specializing in organic chemistry from home and abroad to teach in the department, which laid the initial foundation for the Department of Chemistry of Nankai to develop its own advantages and characteristics.