On 21 November 2015, in Beijing, more than one thousand people attended the funeral service for Dr Lu Wanzhen, a fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and former Chief Engineer of the Research Institute of Petroleum Processing (RIPP), who passed away on 17 November 2015 at the age of 92. Among family members, friends and former students were scientists, engineers and other professionals from the near infrared (NIR) scientific field and instrumentation industry, who came in person to pay their final respects to the highly accomplished scientist and much admired mentor. Dr Lu had an inspiring life and career with many great accomplishments. Born in Tianjin, China, on 29 September 1924, she was among the few female scientists of that time with an advanced education, having obtained her BS degree in Chemical Engineering from the Chongqing Central University in 1946, her MS degree in Chemistry from the University of Illinois in 1948 and her PhD in Chemistry from Ohio State University in 1951. Following her post-doctoral research at Northwestern University, she worked at Corn Products Refining Company in USA as a senior research scientist from 1953 to 1955. Upon returning to China in 1955, she started what became her life-long career in the petroleum industry, where she pioneered the development of numerous analytical technologies in such areas as ultraviolet spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy, gas chromatography, NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. An early example of her success in solving a critical developmental problem in China’s petrochemical industry was her application of analytical investigative methods to raw materials and intermediate and finished Xiaoli Chu and Qian Wang, J. Near Infrared Spectrosc. 23, 267–268 (2015)