Chen-Ning Yang

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Chen-Ning Franklin Yang
Born (1922-10-01) 1 October 1922
Hefei, Anhui, China
Residence China
Citizenship USA
Fields Physics
Institutions Institute for Advanced Study
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Tsinghua University
University of Chicago
Alma mater National Southwestern Associated University
Tsinghua University
University of Chicago
Doctoral advisor Edward Teller
Other academic advisors Enrico Fermi
Doctoral students Bill Sutherland
Alexander Wu Chao
C.K. Lai
Ed Yen
Ben Fan
鄭國順
Known for Parity violation
Yang–Mills theory
Yang–Baxter equation
Notable awards

Nobel Prize in Physics (1957)
Rumford Prize (1980)
National Medal of Science (1986)
Benjamin Franklin Medal (1993)

Albert Einstein Medal (1995)
Spouse Chi-Li Tu (1950–2003)
Fan Weng (2004–present)
This is a Chinese name; the family name is Yang.
Chen-Ning Yang
Simplified Chinese 杨振宁
Traditional Chinese 楊振寧

Chen-Ning Franklin Yang (born October 1, 1922),[1] also known as Yang Zhenning, is a Chinese-born American physicist who works on statistical mechanics and particle physics. He and Tsung-dao Lee received the 1957 Nobel prize in physics for their work on parity nonconservation of weak interaction. Yang became a naturalized American citizen in 1964.

Biography

Yang was born in Hefei, Anhui, China; his father, Yang Wu-Chih (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 the National Southwestern Associated University was located. In the same year, as a second year student, Yang passed the entrance examination and studied at the National Southwestern Associated University. He received his bachelor's degree in 1942, 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 and was subsequently awarded from the Boxer Indemnity, a scholarship set up by the United States government using part of the money from which China had been forced to pay following the Boxer Rebellion. He was delayed for one year, during which time he taught in a middle school as a teacher and studied field theory.

From 1946, Yang studied at the University of Chicago with Edward Teller (1908–2003), where he received his doctorate in 1948 and remained for a year as assistant to Enrico Fermi. In 1949 he moved to the Institute for Advanced Study where he began a period of fruitful collaboration with Tsung-Dao Lee. In 1966 he moved to the State University of New York at Stony Brook and became the Albert Einstein Professor of Physics and the first director of a newly founded Institute for Theoretical Physics which is now known as C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics.

He retired from Stony Brook in 1999 as Emeritus Professor. In 2010, Stony Brook University honored Yang's contributions to the university by naming its newest dormitory building Yang College.[2]

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

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 to rebuild the research atmosphere which was destroyed by the radical political movements during the Cultural Revolution. After retiring from Stony Brook he returned as honorary director of Tsinghua University, Beijing, where he is the Huang Jibei – Lu Kaiqun professor at the Center for Advanced Study (CASTU). He also sits on the Board of Adjudicators for the Shaw Prize and is a Distinguished Professor-at-Large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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 Army General Du Yuming who was taken POW at the end of Chinese civil war. First wife Tu died in the winter of 2003. Yang married Weng Fan (Chinese: 翁帆; pinyin: Wēng Fān) in December 2004.

Yang became a U.S. citizen in 1964. He now resides in China, and he was granted permanent residency in China in 2005.[3]

On Yang's religious views, he is an agnostic.[4]

Awards

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ 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. ↑ "Exclusive: New Dorm Likely to Honor Nobel Laureate". Thinksb.com. 2010-03-18. Retrieved 2011-05-06. 
  3. ↑ "Chinese "Green Card"". China Central Television. 2005-06-24. Retrieved 2013-06-01. 
  4. ↑ 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. And many outstanding scientists are clear-cut theists." 
  5. ↑ "Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences Recipients". American Philosophical Society. Retrieved November 26, 2011. 

References

  • Yang, C.N. (1952) [1952]. Special problems of statistical mechanics. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ASIN B0007FZHH4. 
  • Yang, C.N. (1963) [1961]. Elementary Particles: A Short History of Some Discoveries in Atomic Physics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ASIN B000E1CBGG. 
  • Yang, C.N. (1983) [1983]. Selected papers 1945-1980, with commentary (Chen Ning Yang). San Francisco: W.H. Freeman. ISBN 0-7167-1406-X. 
  • "C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics (YITP)". Retrieved 2008-01-05. 
  • Sutherland, Bill (2004), Beautiful Models, World Scientific Publishing Company, ISBN 978-981-238-859-9 
  • Yang, C.N. (1983), Selected Papers 1945-1980, With Commentary, W.H. Freeman & Company, ISBN 978-0-7167-1406-4 

External links

1901–1925
1926–1950
1951–1975
1976–2000
2001–present
 
Physical sciences
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
2010s
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