Sa Bendong (1902-1949) was born in Minhou county, Fuzhou, East China's Fujian province.

He graduated from the Tsinghua School (name of Tsinghua University from 1912 to 1927) in 1921. He gained a bachelor's degree in mechanics from Stanford University in 1924 and a PhD in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1927.

Sa was the first president of Xiamen University, from 1937 to 1945. In 1948, he went to the United Nations to participate in research in atomic bombs and was chosen as an academician of the Academia Sinica.

His major works include General Physics (《普通物理学》) , Fundamentals of Alternating Current Machines (《交流电机基础》) and General Physics Experiments (《普通物理实验》). The General Physics Experiments was the first textbook of its kind in China.

One of Sa's important contributions was the idea of using a two-vector method to solve the problem of circuit calculation and analysis, which opened up a new research field in electrical engineering.

He died in San Francisco, the United States, in 1949.