File photo of Wu Rukang, one of China's most important paleoanthropologist. [Photo provided to chiandaily.com.cn]

An asteroid has been named after Wu Rukang, arguably China's most important paleoanthropologist, to commemorate his academic contributions to Chinese physical anthropology and paleoanthropology.

The naming ceremony took place on Monday morning at the Zhoukoudian Peking Man Museum in Beijing where Wu did his extensive research on Peking Man fossil specimens.

Wu, also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was born in Jiangsu province in 1916 and died in Beijing in 2006. From 1946 to 1949, he studied anatomy at the Washington University in St. Louis and received his doctorate in 1949. He returned to China in 1949 and continued his research at the CAS's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology since 1953.

He was the first Chinese physical anthropologist that studied human fossils unearthed in China and did profound comparative research on ape fossils and human fossils excavated from 1949 to 1966 across the country, which laid solid foundations for the development of Chinese paleoanthropology.

In the 1960s, based on his studies on Peking Man fossils, Wu proposed the concept that human's physical parts do not develop at the same speed. He also pointed out that the evolution from apes to human requires a long transition period and being able to walking upright marks the beginning of the transition period.

To commemorate his pioneering academic achievements, the International Astronomical Union approved the naming of the asteroid coded 317452 discovered in 2010 by the Purple Mountain Observatory, also a CAS subsidiary.

Asteroids are the only celestial bodies that can be named by their discoverers. According to the CAS, 16 asteroids have been named after Chinese scientists, with the joint support from the Hong Kong-based Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation and the Purple Mountain Observatory.