On April 19, 2017 (March 23, 2017 in the lunar calendar), Chinese scientists were awarded the Vega Prize by the King of Sweden. King Carl XVI Gustav of Sweden (front left) and Yao Tandong. On April 19, 2017, at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, King Carl XVI Gustav (front left) took a photo with Yao Tandong. In view of his contributions to glacier and environmental research in Xizang Plateau, Yao Tandong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Xizang Plateau Institute, was awarded the 2017 Vega Prize at the Royal Palace of Sweden on the 19th. This is the first time a Chinese scientist has won the award. The Vega Prize was established in 1881 after Adolf Erik Nordenschelde, a famous geographer and pioneer of the Arctic Ocean waterway, led the "Vega" to complete the historic voyage around Eurasia for the first time between 1878 and 1880. The Vega Prize is selected every three years after auditions of outstanding geoscientists around the world. It is awarded by the King of Sweden and is known as the "Nobel Prize in Geography". Yao Tandong, male, born in July 1954, from Tongwei, Gansu, a member of the Communist Party of China, director of the Xizang Plateau Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, engaged in glacier and environmental change research, pioneered and developed China's ice core research. In 1986, he received a doctorate from the Institute of Geography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 2007, he was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Winner of the first "Xizang Plateau Youth Science and Technology Award" and "Glacier Permafrost Basic Theory Award", one of the main pioneers of ice core research in our country. He has worked as a postdoctoral and senior visiting scholar at the University of Idaho, the Laboratory of Glacier and Environmental Geophysics of the French Scientific Research Center, the Byrd Polar Research Center of the Ohio State University, and the Climate and Environmental Research Laboratory of the French Atomic Energy Center. He has successively served as the director of the Lanzhou Institute of Glacier and Permafrost Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the deputy director and director of the Institute of Environment and Engineering in Cold and Arid Regions, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Winner of the honorary title of "National Advanced Worker" in 2015. On December 26, 2016, the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography (SSAG) announced that for his contributions to the study of glaciers and the environment of the Xizang Plateau, the 2017 Vega Prize will be awarded to Professor Yao Tandong of the Xizang Plateau Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Yao Tandong is the first Chinese scientist and the first Asian scientist to receive this honor. Yao Tandong