Nobel Prize Chinese Americans Winners 

By Wubing Zong

	Alfred Bernhard Nobel, born in Stockholm, Sweden, on October 21, 1833, was an industrialist, inventor of dynamite and the founder of the prize named after him.  He died in San Remo, Italy, on December 10, 1896.   Nobel Prizes have been awarded annually to great achievers in physics, chemistry, literature, medicine and peace since 1901, and in economic science since 1969.   There were no Nobel Prize winners of Chinese ancestry before 1957 when Drs. C. N. Yang and T. D. Lee, representing China, received their Nobel Prizes in physics.  Since then, there have been three more Chinese American winners in physics and chemistry.   Also, Dr. Chien-shiung Wu, who provided experimental verification to Yang and Lee's theory of parity non-conservation, is described here.  This article is dedicated to these famous Chinese Americans for demonstrating what can be accomplished, given a chance to do so.

Chen Ning Yang

Date of Birth:	September 22, 1922
Place of Birth:	Hefei, Anhui, China
Came to U.S.:	1945
Received Ph.D.:	1948 at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.
U.S. Citizenship: 1964
Nobel Prize:	1957 in Physics

	Dr. Chen Ning Yang  is one of foremost theoretical physicists and mathematicians.  Besides the famous "parity non-conservation theory" which won him the Nobel Prize in 1957, his "Yang-Mills Gauge theory" has a profound impact on modern physics.  

Honors:   Albert Einstein Commerative Award, 1957; Rumford Prize, 1980;
National Medal of Science, 1986; Liberty Award, 1986; Franklin Medal, 1993; Bower Prize, 1995;  Honorary Doctorates from Princeton University, 1958, Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, 1965, University of Wroclaw, 1974; University of Druham, England, 1979; Fudan University, China, 1984; and Eidg Technische Hochschule, Switzerland, 1987; and Honorary Professor at numerous universities in China and a distinguished professor-at-large at the Chinese University of Hongkong. 

	Chen Ning Yang  grew up in the campus of Tsinghua University in Beijing where his father, Kechun (Wuzhi) Yang, was a professor of mathematics.  He had opportunities to meet many scholars and was influenced by these scholars in choosing his career as an academician.   After the Japanese invasion of Beijing in July,1937, Tsinghua and other universities were relocated to Kunming, Yunnan of southwestern China, as  the National Southwestern Associated University.   There, he finished his Bachelor of Science degree in 1942 with a thesis entitled "Group Theory and Molecular Spectra" under professor Ta-You Wu.   He received his master degree of science in 1944 from Tsinghua University with a thesis entitled "Contribution to the Statistical Theory of Order-Disorder Transformations" under Professor Zhuxi Wang.   After the Japanese surrender in September, 1945, Tsinghua University recovered its name and returned to Beijing.  

	Chen Ning Yang came to the United States on a Tsinghua University Fellowship, and entered the University of Chicago (Chicago, Illinois) in January 1946.  Under professors Enrico Fermi and Edward Tellor, Chen Ning Yang completed his Ph. D. degree in 1948.   His Ph.D. thesis: "On the Angular Distribution in Nuclear Reactions and Coincidence Measurements', was written under Professor E. Teller.   Dr. Yang served for a year as an instructor at the University of Chicago, and later as a professor at the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey from 1949 to 1965.   He became a U.S. citizen in 1964.  Since 1965, Dr. Yang has been with the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he became the Albert Einstein Professor of Physics and the Director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics.

	Dr. Yang adopted "Frank or Franklin" as his first name out of admiration of the American statesman, Benjuman Franklin, and to encourage himself to contribute to the course of human events.  He fulfilled this goal by promoting mutual understanding between the United States and China, "the two countries I am bound to " he said.  In spring, 1971, Dr. Yang went to China, the first well-known Chinese American scholar to visit China since 1949.  Since then, he has visited China many times.   In 1983, Dr. Yang established a Research Center Foundation at Zhongshan University in Hong Kong.   Ten years later, the Foundation raised 10 million Hongkong dollars and supported nearly a hundred research projects.  In 1985, Dr. Yang established the Yi Li Da Youth Invention Award? in Shanghai, China. Later, he established the Chien-Shiung Wu Award? and the Xinsheng Chen Award to encourage young Chinese to pursue science.

	In 1995, Dr. Yang was invited to the Central Telecommunication University in Beijing to give lectures received by millions through television.  In his lecture, Dr. Yang reviewed the history of the modern science coming to China.  He said, Although Chinese modern science has a slow start, but it has caught up with the rest of the world.  China has tens of thousands of smart, diligent young scholars. China will become a major industrial countries in the world.