Yang, Chen Ning (redirected from Frank Yang)

Yang, Chen Ning

 known as Frank Yang

(born Sept. 22, 1922, Hofei, Anhwei, China) Chinese-born U.S. theoretical physicist. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1945 and studied with Edward Teller at the University of Chicago. He showed that parity is violated when elementary particles decay. This and other work in particle physics earned him and Tsung-Dao Lee (b. 1926) a 1957 Nobel Prize. His research focused mostly on interactions involving the weak force among elementary particles. He also worked in statistical mechanics.

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Yang, Chen Ning (1922–  ) physicist; born in Hofei, China. The son of a mathematics professor, he came to the U.S.A. to study at the University of Chicago (1945). There he renewed his friendship with Tsung Dao Lee, whom he knew in China when the Japanese forced both men to change schools. Yang became a professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, N.J. (1949–66), regularly meeting with Lee, then a professor at Columbia University. Their conversations regarding particle spin variations on the "mirror symmetry," or parity law, brought the two to collaborate on research disproving the validity of a physical law formerly held inviolate. This breakthrough won Yang and Lee the 1957 Nobel Prize. Yang continued investigations into symmetry principles and statistical mechanics at the State University of New York: Stony Brook (1966). Calling himself "Frank" to Americans (in honor of Benjamin Franklin), he visited China annually to promote mutual understanding between Americans and Chinese.

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Yang, Chen Ning 

Born. Sept. 22, 1922, in Hofei, Anhwei Province. Chinese-American physicist.

An instructor at the University of Chicago in 1948 and 1949, Yang became a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., in 1949 and was named a professor at the institute in 1955. In 1966 he was appointed a professor and the director of the Institute for Nuclear Research at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Yang’s principal works deal with quantum field theory, particle theory, and the theory of phase transitions. In 1956, together with Tsung Dao Lee, he showed theoretically that conservation of parity might be violated in weak interactions (Nobel Prize, 1957). The two scientists suggested that nonconservation of parity could be seen in asymmetry of beta radiation relative to the direction of the spin of the emitting nucleus. Such asymmetry was experimentally observed in 1957 by the American physicist C.-S. Wu and her co-workers.

Yang has also made contributions to two-component neutrino theory, in collaboration with Lee and with R. Oehme, and to condensation theory, in collaboration with Lee. Yang has proved several theorems on the existence of a thermodynamic limit for partition functions.

WORKS

In Russian translation:
“Vopros o sokhranenii chetnosti v slabykh vzaimodeistviiakh.” With T. D. Lee. In Novye svoistva simmetrii elementarnykh chastits. Moscow, 1957. (Translated from English.)
“Zamechaniia o vozmozhnoi neinvariantnosti otnositel’no izmeneniia znaka vremeni i zariadovogo sopriazheniia.” With T. D. Lee and R. Oehme. Ibid.
“Nesokhranenie chetnosti i teoriia dvukhkomponentnogo neitrino.” With T. D. Lee. Ibid.