A Chinese woman physicist is the winner of the first major science award given by the Republic of China. She is Dr. Wu Chien-hsiung, whose experiments proved the theory of the two Chinese male physicists who shared the Nobel Prize in 1957. At a July 22 ceremony in Taipei's Ambassador Hotel, she received a cash award of NT$400,000 (US$10,000), a medal, and a citation from the Chia-hsin Cultural Foundation. Hers was the victory and the honor after a competition among more than 10 candidates recommended by academic institutions of Taiwan. The foundation itself was established in June, 1964, by the Chia-hsin Cement Corporation of Taipei and has an endowment of NT$10 million (US$250,000).
Attending the award ceremony were government officials', diplomats, scholars, and scientists. Premier C. K. Yen praised Dr. Wu as an outstanding physicist, a model wife, and a good mother. He said she possesses the traditional virtue of the women of China—modesty, diligence, and prudence. He said he hopes the nation has many more women like her.
Dr. Wu and her husband, Dr. Yuan Chia-liu, a senior researcher of the Brookhaven National Laboratory, an atomic energy research institution in the United States, returned to Taiwan on July 15. She donated her award money to China for scholarships to students of the natural sciences.
She was attractive as university co-ed. (File photo)
Dr. Wu is among the top scientists of the world. She has received many honors and citations from scientific bodies, including the 1964 Comstock Award of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (she was the first woman to win the honor) and a citation from the Franklin Research Institute.
Great renown has come to her for experiments that disproved the "Law of Parity". This was a basic theory of nuclear science for more than 30 years, accepted by scientists the world over.
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Dr. Lee Tsung-dao and Dr. Yang Chen-ning, co-winners of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957, discovered that the behavior of the K-Meson violated the parity law. They presented three historic papers on the subject. Dr. Wu, then a professor at Columbia University, and other researchers conducted experiments to prove the Lee-Yang theory—that in nuclear physics, the conduct of electrons does not necessarily follow the law of parity. To put it another way, objects in the physical world need not have bilateral symmetry.
The new theory has opened the way to the solution of many problems regarding matter and may be expected to affect human thought profoundly in the second half of the 20th century. Scientists have termed the theory of Drs. Lee and Yang, as verified by Dr. Wu, the most important finding in theoretical physics in the last 10 years and comparable with Einstein's modification of Newton's Law of Gravitation 50 years ago.
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Dr. Wu also has proved the theory of the conserved vector current, thus opening another new path in nuclear physics. When she received an honorary doctorate from Princeton University for such experiments, the Princeton president saluted her as "one of the best experimental physicists in the world".
Miss Wu when she was a graduate student. (File photo)
Once a student of the late and great Dr. Hu Shih, Dr. Wu said her success was due to Dr. Hu's advice—"In academic research, one should make bold assumptions and then carefully prove them." She recalled an encounter with Dr. Hu in San Francisco in 1963, when he was attending an international scientific conference, and also a letter from Dr. Hu in which he said: " ... You are very intelligent and promising. I hope that you will read more books of literature, history as well as science so as to broaden your mind and to enrich your knowledge. I am not trying to talk you into abandoning your study of natural science and returning to literature and history. I only want you to become a scholar of extensive knowledge ... "
Dr. Wu was born in Shanghai in 1914. Her father, Wu Tung-yi, was the principal of a primary school. After graduating from elementary school, she was sent to a junior normal school in Soochow. Her father wanted her to become a teacher. She, however, was interested only in mathematics and physics. After graduating from the junior normal school with flying colors, she entered the National Central University in Nanking.
Tiny, pretty Miss Wu was active in college. A schoolmate, Prof. Sun Tuo-tzu, a famous woman painter, recalled: "She was very prominent among the students. Many of the boys were crazy about her.
"She was a student of the Department of Mathematics in the first year. She changed to physics in her second year. When confronted with difficult problems, she would work all night in trying to solve them. Her marks were among the highest and she won many awards. She never criticized others and cared nothing for fame or wealth. On week-ends, her uncle came to school to take her out driving, but she often preferred to stay in the library and study. Many professors recognized her promise."
American Association of University Women honored Dr. Wu as 1963 Woman of the Year. (File photo)
After graduating from the National Central University, she worked for a short period for the Chekiang University and the Central Research Institute. In 1936, she left for the United States for further study, accompanied by a schoolmate, Miss Tung Jo-feng, who now teaches chemistry at an American university. Their destination was New York, but the ship didn't go beyond San Francisco.
Her Future Husband
Strangers in a new land, they did not know where to go or what to do. Luggage in hand, they sat down in a park to discuss the problem. A Chinese young man passed by and the two girls stopped him to ask the whereabouts of the railway station. The man, who later became Miss Wu's husband, was a graduate student. When he learned Miss Wu wanted to study physics, he recommended the University of California and its famous professor of nuclear physics, Dr. Ernest O. Lawrence. She took his advice, entered the University of California at Berkeley, and later they were married.
During World War II, Dr. Wu and her husband worked on nuclear fission. Afterward, she became a professor of physics at Princeton University, its first woman professor. Later, she went to Columbia.
Dr. Wu is painstaking, responsible researcher. (File photo)
Although she has lived in the United States for three decades, Dr. Wu seldom wears Western dress but favors the chipao or Chinese gown. A close friend equates this with love for her mother country.
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She is a good cook as well as expert laboratory technician. The Wus often invite friends for Chinese food.
They have a son, now a college student in the United States. She has taught him written Chinese and the history of China. She loves literature and music.
During her stay on Taiwan, Dr. Wu toured the island and gave lectures in jam-packed college and university auditoriums.
To students she said: "It takes 99 per cent of study and one per cent of talent to become a scientist."
Dr. Wu, who teaches physics at Columbia, is the only woman member of the Council of Academicians of the Academia Sinica, the highest scholarly body in the Republic of China. Her husband is her most ardent scientific admirer. "In the laboratory," he said, "she cooperates well and is an ardent and responsible researcher. She does not come by her scientific achievements by accident or sheer good luck. When confronted with a question and anxious to solve it, she tosses through the night and cannot sleep."
The problems get solved that way, including the all-important one of how to disprove one of nuclear science's pet theories.