Chien-Shiung Wu

Chien-Shiung Wu (Chinese: 吳健雄; Pinyin: Wú Jiànxíong) (May 31, 1912–February 16, 1997) was a Chinese American physicist with an expertise in radioactivity. She worked on the Manhattan Project (to enrich the uranium fuel) and disproved the conservation of parity. Her nicknames to many scientists are "First Lady of Physics," "Madame Curie of China" and also "Madame Wu".

China

Although her ancestral family home is Taicang (in Jiangsu Province), Wu was born in Shanghai. Her father, Wu Zhongyi (吳仲裔), was a proponent of gender equality and founded Mingde Women's Vocational Continuing School (明德女子職業補習學校), where Chien-Shiung Wu had her entire elementary education until she left her hometown at the age of eleven to go to the Suzhou Women's Normal School No. 2. Her mother was Fan Fuhua (樊復華).

She was admitted to the National Central University in Nanjing in 1929. According to the government regulations of the time, normal school students entering universities needed to serve as teachers for one year, so in 1929 she went to teach in the Public School of China (中國公學) founded by Hu Shi in Shanghai. From 1930 to 1934, she studied in the Physics Department of National Central University (now Nanjing University). For two years after her graduation, she worked with another female researcher, Jing Weijin (靜薇進), in the university.

America

In 1936, she went to the USA with a female friend, Dong Ruofen (董若芬), a chemist from Taicang. Wu studied at the University of California, Berkeley and received her Ph.D in 1940. She married Luke Chia-Liu Yuan (袁家騮, 袁世凯之孙) (the grandson of Yuan Shikai), also a physicist, two years later. They had a son, Vincent (袁緯承), who became a physicist as well. The family moved to the East Coast, where Wu taught at Smith College, Princeton University, and Columbia University (1957). She contributed to the Manhattan Project by developing a process to separate uranium isotopes by gaseous diffusion and by developing improved Geiger counters.

She assisted Tsung-Dao Lee personally in his parity laws development (with Chen Ning Yang) by providing him with a possible test method for beta decay in 1956 that worked successfully. Some consider this very instrumental in the creation of the laws, but she did not share their Nobel Prize - a fact widely blamed on sexism by the selection committee. Her book Beta Decay (1965) is still a standard reference for nuclear physicists.

She later conducted research into the molecular changes in the deformation of hemoglobins that cause sickle-cell disease.

Wu set precedents for womankind on several occasions. She was:

the first female instructor in the Physics Department of Princeton University;
the first woman with a Princeton honorary doctorate;
the first female President of the American Physical Society (1975, through an election).

Other honors Wu had won

Member National Academy of Sciences (elected 1958)
Research Corporation Award 1958
Achievement Award, American Association of University Women 1960
Comstock Award, National Academy of Sciences 1964
Chi-Tsin Achievement Award, Chi-Tsin Culture Foundation, Taiwan 1965
Scientist of the Year Award, Industrial Research Magazine 1974
Tom Bonner Prize, American Physical Society 1975
National Medal of Science (U.S.) 1975
Wolf Prize in Physics, Israel 1978
Honorary Fellow Royal Society of Edinburgh
Fellow American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellow American Physical Society

At the time of her death, Wu was Pupin Professor Emeritus of Physics at Columbia.

Memories

Asteroid named after her.

External links

The Foundation (bilingual)
UCLA Physics
Eulogy-biography (Columbia)
A large black/white photo and a mini-bio
The list of asteroid names: including that named after Wu

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Chien-Shiung Wu

China

America

Memories

External links