Wu Mengchao, a famous Chinese scientist and surgeon, known as the father of Chinese hepatobiliary surgery died on Saturday at age 99, according to Xinhua.

After graduating from the School of Medicine of Shanghai-based Tongji University (now as Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology) in 1949, Wu became a surgeon of the first hospital affiliated with the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai.

In 1956, he joined the Communist Party of China as well as the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and completed the first liver tumor resection in China in 1960, Xinhua reported.

Wu originated a new operation using intermittent interruption of the porta hepatis at room temperature, and completed the first middle lobectomy of the liver worldwide in 1963, according to the Chinese-German Journal of Clinical Oncology, an international professional academic periodical on oncology co-edited by China and Germany.

Also, he successfully removed the world's largest cavernous hemangioma of the liver, weighing 18 kilograms in 1975.

"It would be my greatest happiness if I could work at the operating table until my dying day," Wu once said.

As the pioneer surgeon in Chinese liver surgery, he completed more than 16,000 operations and trained nearly 300 masters, doctors and post-doctors before bidding farewell to the operating table at 96.

In 1991, Wu was elected an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Five years later, China's Central Military Commission awarded him the honorary title "Model Medical Expert".

After receiving the 5-million-yuan (about $777,000) State Preeminent Science and Technology Award of 2005, China's top science award, and 1 million yuan awarded by the PLA, Wu said, "all my knowledge and honor are given by the Party and the army, and I have paid too little to the motherland and the people," and donated all the awards to train talents and reward medical staff with major contributions.

Long before that, in 1997, Wu already set up a fund with a total of 5 million yuan bonus and social donations that he received to reward experts with outstanding achievements in the field of hepatobiliary surgery in China, Xinhua reported.

According to the Nature Index, database tracking institutions and countries and their scientific output, an estimated 782,500 new cases of liver cancer and 745,500 deaths occurred worldwide in 2012, of which China alone accounted for about 50 percent.

In 2009, the establishment of the National Center for Liver Cancer led by Wu was approved by the Chinese government. Now, the Shanghai-based research center has become the world's largest research and prevention base of liver cancer.

"Now, it seems that the four right choices, namely returning to China, studying medicine, joining the army, and joining the Party, made me actually achieve the value of my life," Wu said during his retirement ceremony in 2019.