Chien-Shiung Wu

Chien-Shiung Wu

Chien-Shiung Wu ( Chinese  吴健雄 , Pinyin Wú Jiànxíong ; born May 31, 1912 in Shanghai , Republic of China , † February 16, 1997 in New York City , United States ) was a Chinese-American physicist .

Life

Chien-Shiung Wu was born to a school principal and grew up in Liuhe, Jiangsu Province . She left her homeland after studying physics at the National University of Nanjing (graduated in 1934) at the age of 23 in 1936 to do her doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley in 1940 . There she worked for Ernest Orlando Lawrence . In Berkeley she met her Chinese colleague Luke Chia-Liu Yuan (1912-2003), whom she married in 1942 and with whom she had a son (Vincent Yuan) who also became a physicist. Her husband was from Beijing and was a grandson of the first Chinese president, Yuan Shikai . He worked at the Brookhaven National Laboratory .

From 1943 Chien-Shiung Wu researched and taught at Columbia University in New York and was involved in the Manhattan project to build the atomic bomb until 1944 , with studies on isotope separation by gas diffusion. From 1946 to 1952 she dealt with beta decay . In 1952 she was an Associate Professor and in 1958 a full professorship at Columbia University. In 1973 she became a Pupin Professor of Physics there and in 1980 she retired.

At the end of 1956, in the Wu experiment named after her (carried out at the National Bureau of Standards ) , Chien-Shiung Wu succeeded in demonstrating parity violations in weak interactions and thus providing empirical evidence for the hypothesis of Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang . In the same year they published the theory that in elementary particle physics an exchange of right and left can make a difference, i.e. H. In the case of a spatial mirroring, the original and the mirror image do not always have to be indistinguishable (parity violation). They had also suggested several special experiments. The discovery of parity violation in Wu's experiment was confirmed shortly afterwards by other groups (including Leon Max Lederman , Richard Garwin , Vince Telegdi ).

When Lee and Yang received the Nobel Prize in Physics the following year , many experts believed that Chien-Shiung Wu had wrongly missed out. The reason was seen in the traditional disregard for experimental versus theoretical physics. However, according to the statutes of the Nobel Foundation, only those who have been nominated for the prize may be awarded the Nobel Prize. Since Wu was not nominated a single time, at least until 1966, the award could not have been awarded to her in those years.

Chien-Shiung Wu, who was awarded numerous science prizes and honorary doctorates , lived in seclusion after her retirement under the name of her husband in New York. She died on February 16, 1997 at the age of 84 from complications from a stroke . She was buried at her own request in the school in Taicang , which her father founded and where she attended school.

Wu received the Comstock Prize in Physics (1963), the National Medal of Science (1975), the Wolf Prize in Physics (1978), and the Pupin Medal from Columbia University. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1958), the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1969), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1973) and the American Philosophical Society (1981). In 1973 she was the first woman president of the American Physical Society .

Fonts

• with SA Moszkowski: Beta Decay , Interscience 1966.
• Editor with Vernon Hughes : Muon Physics , 3 volumes, Academic Press 1975–1977.
• Wu, E. Ambler, RW Hayward, DD Hoppes, RP Hudson: Experimental test of parity violation in beta decay , Physical Review, Volume 105, 1957, pp. 1413-1414.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mostly she is quoted as C. S. Wu. She was mostly known to colleagues as Madame Wu.
2. ↑ Biography of Wu, Columbia University
3. ↑ Biography of Luke Chia-Liu Yuan ( Memento of the original from May 24, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)  
4. ↑ Jane J. Lee: 6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism. In: National Geographic, May 19, 2013.
5. ^ RP Hudson: The Reversal of Parity Law in Nuclear Physics , in: DR Lide (Ed.), A Century of Excellence in Measurements, Standards, and Technology, NIST Special Publication 958, CRC Press 2002, pdf
6. ↑ Nomination database of the Nobel Foundation
7. ↑ The grave of Wu ( Memento of the original dated August 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Chinese) 
8. ↑ Member History: Chien-Shiung Wu. American Philosophical Society, accessed November 18, 2018 .