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.

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.