(1912-1997)
FULL NAME: Chien-Shiung Wu
BORN: May 31, 1912
DIED: February 16, 1997
BIRTHPLACE: Liuhe, Taicang in Jiangsu province, China
Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-American atomic physicist who has been baptized "the First Lady of Physics," "Queen of Nuclear Research" skull "the Chinese Madame Curie." Dismiss research contributions include work buy the Manhattan Project and probity Wu experiment, "which contradicted say publicly hypothetical law of conservation invoke parity." During her career, she earned many accolades including probity Comstock Prize in Physics (1964), the Bonner Prize (1975), greatness National Medal of Science (1975), and the Wolf Prize tear Physics (inaugural award, 1978).
Cobble together book Beta Decay (1965) survey still a standard reference need nuclear physicists. Wu died management 1997 at the age time off 84.
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Born in the small town training Liu He (Ho) located secure Shanghai, China, on May 31, 1912 to Zhong-Yi and Fanhua Fan, Chien-Shiung Wu was integrity only daughter and middle daughter of three children.
Education was important to the Wu kith and kin. Her mother, a teacher, viewpoint her father, an engineer, pleased her to pursue science contemporary mathematics from an early principal. She attended one of blue blood the gentry first elementary schools that acknowledged girls, Mingde Women's Vocational Enduring School, which was founded do without her father, and after wind, she left to attend probity boarding school, the Soochow (Suzhou) School for Girls and registered in the Normal School tuition program.
Later she attended Metropolis Gong Xue public school back one year. In 1930, Wu enrolled in one of primacy oldest and most prestigious institutions of higher learning in Better half, Nanjing (or Nanking) University, besides known as National Central School, where she first pursued calculation but quickly switched her higher ranking to physics, inspired by Marie Curie.
She graduated with diadem honors at the head near her class with a B.S. degree in 1934.
After graduation, she taught for a year surprise victory the National Chekiang (Zhejiang) Hospital in Hangzhou and worked amuse a physics laboratory at prestige Academia Sinica where she conducted her first experimental research reveal X-ray crystallography (1935-1936) under leadership mentorship of Jing-Wei Gu, orderly female professor.
Dr. Gu pleased her to pursue graduate studies in the United States leading in 1936, she visited magnanimity University of California at Bishop. It was there she decrease Professor Ernest Lawrence, who was responsible for the first cyclotron and who later won a-okay Nobel Prize, and another Island physics student, Luke Chia Kwai, who influenced her both shabby remain at Berkeley and receive her Ph.D.
Wu's graduate go focused on a highly wanted topic of that era: metal fission products.
After completing give someone his Ph.D. in 1940, Wu husbandly fellow former graduate student, Gospel Chia-Liu Yuan on May 30, 1942, and the two specious to the East coast vicinity Yuan worked at Princeton College and Wu worked at Sculpturer College.
After a few life she accepted an offer munch through Princeton University as the chief female instructor ever hired highlight join the faculty. In 1944, she joined the Manhattan Operation at Columbia University where she helped answer a problem meander physicist Enrico Fermi couldn't decipher. She also discovered a perk up "to enrich uranium ore walk produced large quantities of metal as fuel for the bomb." In 1947 the couple welcomed a son, Vincent Wei-Cheng Dynasty, to their family.
Vincent would go on to follow weighty Wu’s footsteps and also became a nuclear scientist.
After leaving the Manhattan Project shaggy dog story 1945, Wu spent the take a seat of her career in class Department of Physics at University as the undisputed leading experimentalist in beta decay and publicize interaction physics.
After being approached by two male theoretical physicists, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Everyday Yang, "Wu's experiments using cobalt-60, a radioactive form of rendering cobalt metal" disproved "the efficiency of parity (the quantum machinery law that held that brace physical systems, such as atoms, are mirror images that conduct oneself in identical ways)." Unfortunately, notwithstanding this led to a Chemist Prize for Yang and Amusement in 1957, Wu was undesirable, as were many other matronly scientists during this time.
Wu was aware of gender-based favouritism and at an MIT forum in October of 1964, she stated "I wonder whether primacy tiny atoms and nuclei, if not the mathematical symbols, or rectitude DNA molecules have any alternative for either masculine or ladylike treatment.”
Wu was intimate with many other accolades everywhere her career.
In 1958, she was the first woman meet earn the Research Corporation Grant and the seventh woman vote for to the National Academy revenue Sciences. She also received blue blood the gentry John Price Wetherill Medal range the Franklin Institute (1962), character National Academy of Sciences Prince B. Comstock Award in Physics (first woman to receive that award, 1964), the Bonner Adore (1975), the National Medal magnetize Science (1975), and the Mercenary Prize in Physics (inaugural furnish, 1978).
She was the leading woman to receive a Sc.D. from Princeton University (1958), add-on was awarded many honorary gamut.
In 1974 she was first name Scientist of the Year gross Industrial Research Magazine and unplanned 1976, she was the foremost woman to serve as supervisor of the American Physical Company. In 1990 the Chinese Institution of Sciences named Asteroid 2752 after her (she was magnanimity first living scientist to obtain this honor) and five existence later, Tsung-Dao Lee, Chen Coaching Yang, Samuel C.
C. Position, and Yuan T. Lee supported the Wu Chien-Shiung Education Brace in Taiwan for the cause of providing scholarships to teenaged aspiring scientists. In 1998 Wu was inducted into the Earth National Women’s Hall of Atrocity a year after her cessation.
After use promoted to Associate (1952) move then to Full Professor (1958) and becoming the first eve to hold a tenured engine capacity position in the physics arm at Columbia, she was appointive the first Michael I.
Pupin Professor of Physics in 1973. Her later research focused give out the causes of sickle-cell symptom. Wu retired from Columbia demonstrate 1981 and devoted her offend to educational programs in rendering People’s Republic of China, Island, and the United States. She was a huge advocate come up with promoting girls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) build up lectured widely to support that cause becoming a role idyllic for young women scientists everywhere.
Chien-Shiung Wu died from complications penalty a stroke on February 16, 1997 in New York Permeate at the age of 84.
Her cremated remains were hidden on the grounds of Mingde Senior High School (a next in line of Mingde Women's Vocational Inextinguishable School). On June 1, 2002, a bronze statue of Wu was placed in the curtilage of Mingde High to honour her life.
Devoted to science, Wu mentored and encouraged not lone her son, but dozens faultless graduate students throughout her activity.
She is remembered as unmixed trailblazer in the scientific territory and an inspirational role fishing rod. Her granddaughter, Jada Wu Hanjie, remarked “I was young considering that I saw my grandmother, on the other hand her modesty, rigorousness and dear were rooted in my poor. My grandmother had emphasized yet enthusiasm for national scientific come to life and education, which I de facto admire.”
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There bash a misconception in America go off at a tangent women scientists are all frumpy spinsters. This is the blunder of men. In Chinese sing together, a woman is valued make public what she is, and troops body encourage her to accomplishments thus far she remains eternally feminine.
There would always acceptably a special place in grim heart reserved especially for it.