Li Tianye (厉鼎毅) can be thought of as he who speeded up the Internet by a factor of 100 during the 1990s, and a man capable of giving entertaining speeches on the most mundane of technical subjects, altogether an unusual calling for the son of a Chinese diplomat.
李鼎毅（厉鼎毅）可以被认为是他在20世纪90年代将互联网的速度提高了100倍，他是一个能够就最平凡的技术主题发表娱乐性演讲的人，对于一位中国外交官的儿子来说，这完全是一个不寻常的召唤。
Born in Nanjing on 7 July, 1931, Li’s path in life would have been very different were it not for the fact his father was a senior officer in the then Chinese Foreign Ministry. Assigned to South Africa, it was there that Li’s destiny took shape, with his graduating from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, with a bachelor’s degree from the School of Electrical and Information Engineering.
1931年7月7日出生于南京，如果不是因为他的父亲是当时中国外交部的高级官员，他的人生道路会大不相同。 被分配到南非，李的命运正是在那里成形的，他毕业于约翰内斯堡的威特沃特斯兰德大学，获得电气和信息工程学院的学士学位。
Li’s next stop was to be Northwestern University in Illinois, USA, whereupon graduating he commenced work at AT&T, then Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he would remain for 41 years, rising to preeminence in his chosen fields of microwaves, lasers and optical communications.
李的下一站是去美国伊利诺伊州的西北大学，毕业后，他开始在AT&T工作，然后是贝尔电话实验室，在那里他待了41年，在他选择的微波、激光和光通信领域中嶽��不振。
The big break came in 1961, when Li coauthored a paper with his colleague, A. Gardner Fox, entitled “Resonant modes in a maser interferometer” that was published by The Bell System Technical Journal. Regarded now as a classic that is also fundamental to the theory and practice of lasers, the work had been cited over 595 times by 1979.
重大突破是在1961年，当时李与他的同事A·加德纳·福克斯共同撰写了一篇题为“干涉仪中的共振模式”的论文，该论文由《贝尔系统技术杂志》出版。 现在被认为是激光理论和实践的经典之作，到1979年，该作品已被引用超过595次。
Fibre optics became Li’s next focus, with he and his team performing a 1992 experiment that became known as the “Roaring Success”, given it was conducted in Roaring Creek, Pennsylvania, USA.
光纤成为李的下一个关注点，他和他的团队在1992年进行了一项被称为“咆哮的成功”的实验，因为它在美国宾夕法尼亚州的咆哮溪进行。
Therein, Li sought to employ Erbium-doped fiber amplifiers and amplified Wavelength Division Multiplexing systems that allowed more channels to be placed on a single fibre; until that point, all optical communications utilised only one channel, a technique that had been around since the 1980s.
因此，李试图使用铒掺杂光纤放大器和放大波分多路复用系统，允许在单个光纤上放置更多通道；在此之前，所有光通信仅使用一个通道，这种技术自20世纪80年代以来一直存在。
The result was 2.5 Gbit/s of transmission per channel, an outstanding acceleration of communication capabilities that helped make the IT industry what it is today; a revolution in high-speed, long-distance communication equating to an upgrade in capacity by a factor of 100.
结果是每通道传输2.5 Gbit/s，通信能力的出色加速，帮助IT行业成为今天；高速、长途通信的革命等同于容量提升了100倍。
Now a US national, such a zenith in his career was to make Li the very first foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, while in 1995 he was also elected President of the Optical Society of America for his outstanding contribution and spirit of service.
现在是美国国民，他职业生涯的顶峰使李成为中国工程院的第一位外国院士，而1995年，他还因其杰出的贡献和服务精神而当选为美国光学学会主席。
An antipathy of the stereotypical boring scientist persona, Li became affectionately known as “Uncle Tianye” by many of the younger colleagues whom he mentored, while a talk he gave at a 2001 conference carried the title, “Crouching Technologies and Hidden Profits”.
李对刻板的无聊科学家角色的反感，被他指导的许多年轻同事亲切地称为“天爷叔叔”，而他在2001年的一次会议上发表的演讲题为“蹲下技术和隐藏的利润”。
In addition to his extraordinary gifts made to the telecommunications industry, Li is also remembered for some of his many notable quotes, including “Photonics is a 40-year overnight success” and “Good physicists upgrade themselves into system engineers”.
除了他对电信行业的非凡礼物外，李还因其许多值得注意的名言而被人们记住，包括“光子学是40年的一夜成功”和“优秀的物理学家将自己提升为系统工程师”。
Survived by his wife, Edith Wu (吴修惠), with whom he lived in Boulder, Colorado, USA, Li passed away on 27 December, 2012.
李于2012年12月27日去世，他的妻子吴修惠（吴修惠）与她一起住在美国科罗拉多州博尔德。