Editor's note: On November 29, Science, the internationally-renowned academic journal, published online a special issue of the 125th anniversary of Wuhan University. This issue entitled Celebrating 125 Years of Academic Excellence: Wuhan University(1893–2018) introduces WHU’s academic achievements over the past 125 years. Dou Xiankang, President of Wuhan University and also CAS (Chinese Academy of Sciences) member, writes a signed article on its preface. This issue also reported the research progress of 11 scientific research institutes and teams in Wuhan University, including the Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Institute for Advanced Studies, the Medical Research Institute, the Institute of Technological Sciences, the State Key Laboratory of Information Engineering in Surveying, Mapping and Remote Sensing, the State Key Laboratory of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering Science, the State Key Laboratory of Virology(joint), the State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice(joint), the Global Navigation Satellite System Research Center, the research group of Baoliang Song, and the research group of Zhengyou Liu.