Chen-Ning Yang

Last updated
Chen-Ning Yang

CNYang.jpg

Yang in 2005
Born (1922-10-01) 1 October 1922 (age 95) [1]
Hefei, Anhui Province, China
Residence Beijing
Nationality Chinese
Citizenship
Alma mater
Known for
Spouse(s) Chih-Li Tu (1950–2003)
Fan Weng (2004–present)
Children 3
Awards
Scientific career
Fields Statistical mechanics
Particle physics
Institutions
Doctoral advisor Edward Teller
Other academic advisors Enrico Fermi
Doctoral students Bill Sutherland
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese 杨振宁
Traditional Chinese 楊振寧

Chen-Ning Yang or Yang Zhenning (Chinese :杨振宁; born October 1, [1] 1922) is a Chinese physicist who works on statistical mechanics and particle physics. He and Tsung-dao Lee received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics [2] for their work on parity nonconservation of weak interaction. The two proved theoretically[ citation needed ] that one of the basic quantum-mechanics laws, the conservation of parity, is violated in the so-called weak nuclear reactions, those nuclear processes that result in the emission of beta or alpha particles. The most important work of Yang is Yang-Mills theory.

Simplified Chinese characters standardized Chinese characters developed in mainland China

Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Table of General Standard Chinese Characters for use in mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, they are one of the two standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language. The government of the People's Republic of China in mainland China has promoted them for use in printing since the 1950s and 1960s to encourage literacy. They are officially used in the People's Republic of China and Singapore.

Physicist scientist who does research in physics

A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate causes of phenomena, and usually frame their understanding in mathematical terms. Physicists work across a wide range of research fields, spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic and particle physics, through biological physics, to cosmological length scales encompassing the universe as a whole. The field generally includes two types of physicists: experimental physicists who specialize in the observation of physical phenomena and the analysis of experiments, and theoretical physicists who specialize in mathematical modeling of physical systems to rationalize, explain and predict natural phenomena. Physicists can apply their knowledge towards solving practical problems or to developing new technologies.

Statistical mechanics is one of the pillars of modern physics. It is necessary for the fundamental study of any physical system that has a large number of degrees of freedom. The approach is based on statistical methods, probability theory and the microscopic physical laws.

Contents

Biography

Yang was born in Hefei, Anhui, China; his father, Yang Wuzhi (楊武之; 1896–1973), was a mathematician, and his mother, Luo Meng-hua (羅孟華), was a housewife. Yang attended elementary school and high school in Beijing, and in the autumn of 1937 his family moved to Hefei after the Japanese invaded China. In 1938 they moved to Kunming, Yunnan, where National Southwestern Associated University (Lianda), was located. In the same year, as a second year student, Yang passed the entrance examination and studied at Lianda. He received his bachelor's degree in 1942, [3] with his thesis on the application of group theory to molecular spectra, under the supervision of Ta-You Wu. He continued to study graduate courses there for two years under the supervision of Wang Zhuxi, working on statistical mechanics. In 1944 he received his master's degree from Tsinghua University, which had moved to Kunming during the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). [3] Yang was then awarded a scholarship from the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program, set up by the United States government using part of the money China had been forced to pay following the Boxer Rebellion. His departure for the United States was delayed for one year, during which time he taught in a middle school as a teacher and studied field theory.

Hefei Prefecture-level city in Anhui, Peoples Republic of China

Hefei is the capital and largest city of Anhui Province, People's Republic of China. A prefecture-level city, it is the political, economic, and cultural center of Anhui. Located in the central portion of the province, it borders Huainan to the north, Chuzhou to the northeast, Wuhu to the southeast, Tongling to the south, Anqing to the southwest and Lu'an to the west.

Anhui Province

Anhui, is a province of the People's Republic of China located in the eastern region of the country. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, bordering Jiangsu to the east, Zhejiang to the southeast, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei to the southwest, Henan to the northwest, and Shandong for a short section in the north.

Beijing Municipality in Peoples Republic of China

Beijing, formerly romanized as Peking, is the capital of the People's Republic of China, the world's third most populous city proper, and most populous capital city. The city, located in northern China, is governed as a municipality under the direct administration of central government with 16 urban, suburban, and rural districts. Beijing Municipality is surrounded by Hebei Province with the exception of neighboring Tianjin Municipality to the southeast; together the three divisions form the Jingjinji metropolitan region and the national capital region of China.

From 1946, Yang studied with Edward Teller (1908–2003) at the University of Chicago, where he received his doctorate in 1948. He remained at the University of Chicago for a year as an assistant to Enrico Fermi. In 1949 he was invited to do his research at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, where he began a period of fruitful collaboration with Tsung-Dao Lee. He was made a permanent member of the Institute in 1952, and full professor in 1955. In 1963, Princeton University Press published his textbook, Elementary Particles. In 1965 he moved to Stony Brook University, where he was named the Albert Einstein Professor of Physics and the first director of the newly founded Institute for Theoretical Physics. Today this institute is known as the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Edward Teller Hungarian-American nuclear physicist

Edward Teller was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb", although he did not care for the title. He made numerous contributions to nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy, and surface physics. His extension of Enrico Fermi's theory of beta decay, in the form of Gamow–Teller transitions, provided an important stepping stone in its application, while the Jahn–Teller effect and the Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) theory have retained their original formulation and are still mainstays in physics and chemistry. Teller also made contributions to Thomas–Fermi theory, the precursor of density functional theory, a standard modern tool in the quantum mechanical treatment of complex molecules. In 1953, along with Nicholas Metropolis, Arianna Rosenbluth, Marshall Rosenbluth, and Augusta Teller, Teller co-authored a paper that is a standard starting point for the applications of the Monte Carlo method to statistical mechanics. Throughout his life, Teller was known both for his scientific ability and for his difficult interpersonal relations and volatile personality.

University of Chicago Private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. The university is composed of an undergraduate college, various graduate programs and interdisciplinary committees organized into five academic research divisions and seven professional schools. Beyond the arts and sciences, Chicago is also well known for its professional schools, which include the Pritzker School of Medicine, the Booth School of Business, the Law School, the School of Social Service Administration, the Harris School of Public Policy Studies, the Divinity School and the Graham School of Continuing Liberal and Professional Studies. The university holds top-ten positions in various national and international rankings.

Enrico Fermi Nuclear physicist

Enrico Fermi was an Italian and naturalized-American physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi held several patents related to the use of nuclear power, and was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics.

He retired from Stony Brook University in 1999, assuming the title Emeritus Professor. In 2010, Stony Brook University honored Yang's contributions to the university by naming its newest dormitory building C. N. Yang Hall. [4]

Stony Brook University public university in Stony Brook, New York, United States

The State University of New York at Stony Brook, commonly known as Stony Brook University (SBU) and SUNY Stony Brook, is a public sea-grant and space-grant research university in Stony Brook, New York. It is one of four university centers of the State University of New York system.

He has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Academia Sinica, the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society. He was awarded honorary doctorate degrees by Princeton University (1958), Moscow State University (1992), and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (1997).

The American Physical Society (APS) is the world's second largest organization of physicists. The Society publishes more than a dozen scientific journals, including the prestigious Physical Review and Physical Review Letters, and organizes more than twenty science meetings each year. APS is a member society of the American Institute of Physics.

Chinese Academy of Sciences academy of sciences

The Chinese Academy of Sciences, with historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republican era and formerly also known by that name, is the national academy for the natural sciences of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Collectively known as the "Two Academies (两院)" along with the Chinese Academy of Engineering, it is an institution of China, functioning as the national scientific think tank and academic governing body, providing advisory and appraisal services on issues stemming from the national economy, social development, and science and technology progress. It is headquartered in Xicheng District, Beijing, with branch institutes all over mainland China. It has also created hundreds of commercial enterprises, Lenovo being one of the most famous.

Academia Sinica National Academy of Taiwan

Academia Sinica, headquartered in Nangang District, Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. It supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from mathematical and physical sciences, to life sciences, and to humanities and social sciences. As an educational institute, it provides PhD training and scholarship through its English-language Taiwan International Graduate Program in biology, agriculture, chemistry, physics, informatics, and earth and environmental sciences. Academia Sinica is ranked 144th in Nature Publishing Index - 2014 Global Top 200 and 22nd in Reuters World's Most Innovative Research Institutions. The current president since 2016 is James C. Liao, an expert in metabolic engineering, systems biology and synthetic biology.

Yang visited the Chinese mainland in 1971 for the first time after the thaw in China–US relations, and has subsequently made great efforts to help the Chinese physics community rebuild the research atmosphere which was destroyed by the radical political movements during the Cultural Revolution. After retiring from Stony Brook he returned as an honorary director of Tsinghua University, Beijing, where he is the Huang Jibei-Lu Kaiqun Professor at the Center for Advanced Study (CASTU). He also is one of the two Shaw Prize Founding Members and is a Distinguished Professor-at-Large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Cultural Revolution socio-political movement in China

The Cultural Revolution, formally the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in China from 1966 until 1976. Launched by Mao Zedong, then Chairman of the Communist Party of China, its stated goal was to preserve Chinese Communism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society, and to re-impose Mao Zedong Thought as the dominant ideology within the Party. The Revolution marked Mao's return to a position of power after the failures of his Great Leap Forward. The movement paralyzed China politically and negatively affected both the economy and society of the country to a significant degree.

Tsinghua University university in Beijing, China

Tsinghua University is a major research university in Beijing, and a member of the elite C9 League of Chinese universities. Since its establishment in 1911, it has graduated numerous Chinese leaders in politics, business, academia, and culture.

Shaw Prize award

The Shaw Prize is an annual award first presented by the Shaw Prize Foundation in 2004. Established in 2002 in Hong Kong, it honours

"individuals who are currently active in their respective fields and who have recently achieved distinguished and significant advances, who have made outstanding contributions in academic and scientific research or applications, or who in other domains have achieved excellence. The award is dedicated to furthering societal progress, enhancing quality of life, and enriching humanity's spiritual civilization."

Personal life

Yang married Chih-li Tu (Chinese :杜致禮; pinyin :Dù Zhìlǐ), a teacher, in 1950 and has two sons and a daughter with her: Franklin Jr., Gilbert and Eulee. His father-in-law was a Kuomintang General Du Yuming. Some scholars suspect that Du was promoted to a high-ranking position in Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in order to convince Yang to return to China after seeking refuge in the US. After Tu died in the winter of 2003, Yang married the then 28-year-old Weng Fan (Chinese :翁帆; pinyin :Wēng Fān) in December 2004. [5]

Yang became a U.S. citizen in 1964. He now resides in China, and he was granted permanent residency in China in 2004. [6] [7] He renounced his U.S. citizenship as of Sep 30, 2015 [8] and reclaimed his Chinese citizenship. [9] [10]

On Yang's religious views, he is an agnostic. [11]

Awards

Yang (seated, left) with fellow Nobel Prize winners (left to right; standing) Val Fitch, James Cronin and Samuel C. C. Ting, and (seated) Isidor Isaac Rabi. HD.3F.010 (11086446676).jpg
Yang (seated, left) with fellow Nobel Prize winners (left to right; standing) Val Fitch, James Cronin and Samuel C. C. Ting, and (seated) Isidor Isaac Rabi.

Publications (selection)

See also

Notes

    Related Research Articles

    Brookhaven National Laboratory United States Department of Energy national laboratory

    Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory located in Upton, New York, on Long Island, and was formally established in 1947 at the site of Camp Upton, a former U.S. Army base. Its name stems from its location within the Town of Brookhaven, approximately 60 miles east of New York City.

    National Tsing Hua University university in Hsinchu City, Taiwan

    National Tsing Hua University is a research university located in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, R.O.C.

    Samuel C. C. Ting physicist

    Samuel Chao Chung Ting is a Chinese-American physicist who received the Nobel Prize in 1976, with Burton Richter, for discovering the subatomic J/ψ particle. He is the principal investigator for the international $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment which was installed on the International Space Station on 19 May 2011.

    Tsung-Dao Lee Chinese-American physicist

    Tsung-Dao Lee is a Chinese-American physicist, known for his work on parity violation, the Lee Model, particle physics, relativistic heavy ion (RHIC) physics, nontopological solitons and soliton stars. He holds the rank of University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1953 and from which he retired in 2012.

    Andrew Yao Taiwanese American computer scientist

    Andrew Chi-Chih Yao is a Chinese computer scientist and computational theorist. He is currently a Professor and the Dean of Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences (IIIS) at Tsinghua University. Yao used the minimax theorem to prove what is now known as Yao's Principle.

    Robert Laurence Mills was a physicist, specializing in quantum field theory, the theory of alloys, and many-body theory. While sharing an office at Brookhaven National Laboratory, in 1954, Chen Ning Yang and Mills proposed a tensor equation for what are now called Yang–Mills fields :

    Burton Richter American physicist

    Burton Richter was an American physicist. He led the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) team which co-discovered the J/ψ meson in 1974, alongside the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) team led by Samuel Ting for which they won Nobel Prize for Physics in 1976. This discovery was part of the so-called November Revolution of particle physics. He was the SLAC director from 1984 to 1999.

    James Cronin American physicist

    James Watson Cronin was an American particle physicist.

    David Gross American particle physicist and string theorist

    David Jonathan Gross is an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. Along with Frank Wilczek and David Politzer, he was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of asymptotic freedom. David Gross is the Chancellor’s Chair Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and was formerly the KITP director and holder of their Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics. He is also a faculty member in the UC Santa Barbara Physics Department and is currently affiliated with the Institute for Quantum Studies at Chapman University in California. He is a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

    Raymond Davis Jr. American scientist

    Raymond "Ray" Davis Jr. was an American chemist and physicist. He is best known as the leader of the Homestake experiment in the 1960s-1980s, which was the first experiment to detect neutrinos emitted from the Sun; for this he shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physics.

    Maurice Goldhaber American physicist

    Maurice Goldhaber was an Austrian-born American physicist, who in 1957 established that neutrinos have negative helicity.

    Peter van Nieuwenhuizen is a Dutch physicist. He is now a distinguished Professor at Stony Brook University in the United States. Van Nieuwenhuizen is best known for his discovery of supergravity with Sergio Ferrara and Daniel Z. Freedman.

    The Institute for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University is a research institute established in Beijing in 1997. Modelled after the Princeton-based Institute for Advanced Study, albeit in a university setting, it is engaged in theoretical studies in physics, computer science and biology. Its honorary director is the Nobel Laureate professor Chen Ning Yang, who has provided guidance and support to CASTU since its inception, and current director is professor Gu Binglin.

    Alexander Borissowitsch Zamolodchikov is a Russian physicist, known for his contributions to condensed matter physics, two-dimensional conformal field theory, and string theory, and is currently the C.N. Yang/Wei Deng Endowed Chair of Physics at Stony Brook University.

    Hu Ning Chinese theoretical physicist

    Hu Ning was a Chinese theoretical physicist.

    Ye Qisun Chinese physicist

    Ye Qisun, also named Ye Hongjuan (叶鸿眷), was a renowned Chinese physicist and one of the founders of modern physics in China.

    Michael John Creutz is an American theoretical physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory specializing in lattice gauge theory and computational physics.

    Shoucheng Zhang Chinese American physicist

    Shoucheng Zhang was a Chinese-American physicist who was the JG Jackson and CJ Wood professor of physics at Stanford University. He was a condensed matter theorist known for his work on topological insulators, the quantum Hall effect, the quantum spin Hall effect, spintronics, and high-temperature superconductivity. According to the National Academy of Science:

    He discovered a new state of matter called topological insulator in which electrons can conduct along the edge without dissipation, enabling a new generation of electronic devices with much lower power consumption. For this ground breaking work he received numerous international awards, including the Buckley Prize, the Dirac Medal and Prize, the Europhysics Prize, the Physics Frontiers Prize and the Benjamin Franklin Medal.

    Dmitri E. Kharzeev is a theoretical physicist working on quantum field theory, nuclear physics, and condensed matter physics. He is a Distinguished Professor and Director of Center for Quantum Materials at Stony Brook University, and the Head of RIKEN-BNL Theory group at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York.

    Sally Dawson is an American physicist who deals with theoretical elementary particle physics.

    References

    Citations

    1. 1 2 Bing-An Li, Yuefan Deng. "Biography of C.N. Yang" (PDF). Retrieved 2007-09-11. His birth date was erroneously recorded as September 22, 1922 in his 1945 passport. He has since used this incorrect date on all subsequent official documents.
    2. ↑ "The Nobel Prize in Physics 1957". The Nobel Foundation. Retrieved 2014-11-01.
    3. 1 2 "Nobel Prize Web site" . Retrieved 2014-10-16.
    4. ↑ "Exclusive: New Dorm Likely to Honor Nobel Laureate". Thinksb.com. 2010-03-18. Archived from the original on July 17, 2011. Retrieved 2011-05-06.
    5. ↑ http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-12/16/content_400791.htm
    6. ↑ "杨振宁获得外国人在华永久居留证" (in Chinese). 人民網. 2004-11-05. Retrieved 2017-02-21.
    7. ↑ "Chinese "Green Card"". China Central Television. 2005-06-24. Retrieved 2013-06-01.
    8. ↑ "Quarterly Publication of Individuals, Who Have Chosen To Expatriate, as Required by Section 6039G". Federal Register. Retrieved 22 February 2017.
    9. ↑ "杨振宁、姚期智正式转为中国科学院院士" (in Chinese). 2017-02-21. Retrieved 2017-02-21.
    10. ↑ Zhang, Zhihao (2017-02-21). "Nobel laureate, Turing Award winner become Chinese citizens, join CAS". China Daily . Retrieved 2017-02-21.
    11. ↑ Jesse Hong Xiong (2009). "Seven". The Outline of Parapsychology. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 322. ISBN   9780761849452. When a reporter asked him: “Do you believe there is a Creator who creates all in the universe?" Professor Chen Ning Yang (1922- ), a Chinese Nobel Prize winner in physics in 1957, answered: “I think it is hard for me to directly say 'yes' or 'no'. I can only say that when we more and more understand the wonderful structures in the nature, no matter whether we directly or indirectly ask the question, there does exist the question you ask: is there someone or God who takes charge of all? I think it is a question that will never be finally answered. (The reporter asked: 'Is it because what man knows is too limited?') On one hand, yes; on the other hand, we can have a feeling that the universe will not be created so wonderful without an ultimate goal.” Professor Yang held agnosticism here.
    12. ↑ "Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences Recipients". American Philosophical Society . Retrieved November 26, 2011.

    Sources

    This page is based on this Wikipedia article
    Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
    Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.