... and has the same birthday as 夏海伦!
Zhou Youguang invented pinyin — the system used to transcribe the sounds of Chinese using the letters of the Roman alphabet — in the 1950s during the early years of Communist China. His life story is fascinating. He's seen the ups and downs of China's transition from the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China (under the Kuomintang or Nationalist Party) to the People's Republic of China (under the Communist Party). In recent years, he's become a bit of a political dissident, and he was keeping a very active blog until recently (perhaps less in recent years because of the GFW).