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A 51-year-old Chinese scientist who fought her way up from the assembly line of a bus factory to become a respected professor at a British university last night won the Outstanding Asian Woman of Achievement Award.
Xiangqian Jiang - known as Jane in the UK - was taken out of school aged 15 and sent to work as a chassis assembly worker during the cultural revolution in China. She said she resigned herself to the mindless graft for two decades but never gave up on her ambition to become a scientist.
She taught herself at night school, studying for up to five hours every evening to become proficient in engineering, maths and science until she was finally able to go to university. "I had a strong scientific curiosity and I was determined to go to university so that I could contribute more to society," she explained.
After finishing her PhD at the age of 40 in China, she was persuaded to move to Britain in 1995 to work as a research scientist at Birmingham University, and later Huddersfield.
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