He is a materials scientist and Professor of Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, born on May 1919. He graduated from the Department of Mining and Metallurgy, Yunnan University in 1942 and received his M.S. degrees from the Department of Metallurgy, University of Missouri, Rolla and the Department of Ceramic Engineering, University of Illinois, U.S.A. in 1948 and 1950 respectively. He was elected to be a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1993.

Prof. Yin has devoted himself for a long time to the research on functional ceramics and scintillation crystals. He is one of the pioneers in the research and development of the lead zirconium titinate (PZT) piezoelectric ceramics in China and made important contributions to the research and applications of China's functional ceramic materials. He did research work on the phase transition and microstructure changes in the relaxor ferroelectrics PLZT transparent ceramics and primarily observed the nanometer size polar micro-regions in it. Since the early 1980's, he has been mainly engaged in the scintillation crystals research. After recognizing the radiation damage in the bismuth germanate (BGO) crystal, being the result of forming radiation-induced color center due to oxygen vacancies in the crystal, he successfully developed a new type of Eu-doped BGO scintillation crystal with high radiation hardness. A scintillation crystal research group led by him provided more than 10,000 pieces of large size BGO crystal for the construction of the electromagnetic calorimeter in the European Nuclear Research Center (CERN). In recent years, he has been working on the halide scintillation crystals. such as BaF₂ , Caf₃, PbF₂, Csl(TI), etc., and fruitful progress has been attained.