biography
| name: |
Yang, Chen Ning
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known as Frank Yang
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1922– )
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| biography:
| Physicist, born in Hofei, China. The son of a mathematics professor, he went to the USA to study at the University of Chicago (1945). There he renewed his friendship with Tsung Dao Lee, whom he knew in China when the Japanese forced both men to change schools. Yang became a professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, NJ (1949–66), regularly meeting with Lee, then a professor at Columbia University. Their conversations regarding particle spin variations on the ‘mirror symmetry’ or parity law, brought the two to collaborate on research disproving the validity of a physical law formerly held inviolate. This breakthrough won Yang and Lee the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics. Yang continued investigations into symmetry principles and statistical mechanics at the State University of New York, Stony Brook (1966). Calling himself ‘Frank’ to Americans (in honour of Benjamin Franklin), he visited China annually to promote mutual understanding between Americans and Chinese. |
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