The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has officially named asteroid No. 1998CS2 after noted mathematician Shiing-shen Chern (Chen Xingshen) for his outstanding contribution in his field.

The decision, which was announced by IAU's Lesser Planets Center last week, came as a special blessing for Chern's 93rd birthday, which fell on Oct. 28, said sources with his alma mater,Nankai University in Tianjin.

Chern celebrated his birthday at his home on Nankai's campus, where he has been living since 2000 and is heading its mathematics institute.

Chern is best known for his achievements in the study of differential geometry. He was born in 1911 in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province, China. He graduated from Nankai University in 1930 and received further education at Tsinghua University and the University of Hamburg in Germany.

He taught at several Chinese and US universities (Princeton University, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Berkeley) and is by far the only Chinese to win the Wolf Prize -- the most distinguished award in the international mathematics field.

The newly named asteroid, bearing IAU's permanent serial number 1998CS2, was discovered in 1998 by skywatchers with the Schmidt CCD Asteroid Program of the National Astronomical Observatories under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Asteroids are by far the only celestial bodies that can be named by their discoverers. A newly discovered asteroid will get a permanent international serial number from IAU's Lesser Planets Center only after it is observed for at least four times and its orbit defined.

By May 2002, the most recent year that data were available, China's National Astronomical Observatories had observed and obtained international serial numbers for 575 asteroids.