Lin was born in Jiefu Township of
Yongchun County,
Quanzhou, China on March 13, 1938. After graduating from
Zhejiang University in 1960, he was assigned to study at
PLA Military Institute of Engineering in
Harbin,
northeast China's
Heilongjiang province. In May 1963 he was transferred to the PLA General Equipment Department, where he headed the development of pressure recorder for measuring nuclear explosion shock wave. From the explosion of China's first atomic bomb in 1964 to the last underground nuclear test in 1996, he participated in all 45 nuclear tests in China. In 1993 he was promoted to the rank of
major general (
shao jiang). In 2001 he was accepted as an academician of the
Chinese Academy of Engineering. On May 31, 2012, he died of
cholangiocarcinoma at the Tangdu Hospital,
Xi'an,
Shaanxi. Before he died, he said: "I've only done one thing in my life, nuclear test. I'm very satisfied." In February 2013, he was honored as one of the "Ten People Who Moved China". ==Personal life==