Professor Zhang

Professor Zhang is a minor character in Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem. He is a retired professor living in Beijing, the next-door neighbor of Wang Miao, the nanomaterials researcher whose experiences drive the present-day storyline. Figures like Professor Zhang populate the ordinary world of the early chapters: colleagues, neighbors, and academics going about routine lives in the city while, around them, unsettling events begin to touch the scientific community, with prominent researchers dying under unexplained circumstances. He appears only briefly, as part of the everyday texture of Wang Miao's life.