Dr. Mao Yisheng, also known as Mao Tangchen, was born in Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province. Dr. Mao received a Bachelor of Engineering from Tangshan Engineering College (later known as Tangshan Chiao Tung University, and now Southwest Jiaotong University) in 1916. After that, he went on to study at Cornell University with a Tsinghua Overseas Scholarship, and earned his Master's degree from Cornell University in1917, and his Ph.D. was granted by the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1919. In 1926, Dr. Mao was employed by Dr. Liu Xianzhou, then the President of Peiyang University, to teach Bridge Mechanics and Structural Engineering. Dr. Mao was the Dean of Engineering College at Peiyang University from December, 1928 to July, 1930. On March 31, 1929, the main building of Peiyang University was severely damaged in a catastrophic fire. In charge of the fund raising and reconstruction of the school building, Dr. Mao went to the Ministry of Education in Nanjing, applying for using the remission of Boxer Indemnity. To overcome the financial difficulty at Peiyang University, he took the responsibility of reprinting textbooks to reduce expenditure and to meet the need of updating information. From 1933 on, Dr. Mao was in charge of designing and constructing Qiantang River Bridge, the first dual-purpose road-and-railway bridge designed and built by a Chinese. He also personally blew up the bridge at the breakout of the Anti-Japanese War soon after the bridge was completed. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Mao was appointed as the President of Peiyang University in 1946, but he took the responsibility of rebuilding the Qiantang River Bridge instead.