SPOTLIGHT ON Experimental Physicist “First Lady of Physics”

 Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese American experimental physicist who made significant contributions in the research of radioactivity.  Emigrated to the United States from China  Received a Ph.D. from Univ. of California, Berkeley  Recruited by Columbia University for the Manhattan Project. She helped develop a process to enrich uranium ore to produce the fuel for the atomic bomb.  1956 – Wu Experiment - using atoms of cobalt-60, Wu showed that beta particles were more likely to be emitted in a particular direction that depended on the spin of the cobalt nuclei.  Her research helped to destroy the "law of conservation of parity," which had been assumed to be a fundamental law of nature; it predicted that beta particles, which are emitted by a radioactive nucleus, would fly off in any direction, regardless of the spin of the nucleus.

 1957 – Yang and Lee win the Nobel Prize in Physics  Made full professor at Columbia University  Chien-Shiung Wu experimentally confirmed a theory by Richard Feynman and Murry Gell-Mann, part of the unified theory.  Became a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences  Appointed to an endowed professorship by Columbia University  Appointed as the first Pupin Professor of Physics  1981 – Retires but continued to lecture, teach, and to apply science to public policy issues. She traveled the world to speak to audiences of her successes in the lab and of being a woman in a male-dominated field. Just as her father had been many years before, Wu was a champion of women.

Parity Law stated that objects that are mirror images of each other behave in the same way. Until 1956 it was assumed that, when an isolated system of fundamental particles interacts, the overall parity remains the same or is conserved. This conservation of parity implied that, for fundamental physical interactions, it is impossible to distinguish right from left and clockwise from counterclockwise. The laws of physics, it was thought, are indifferent to mirror reflection and could never predict a change in parity of a system. This law of the conservation of parity was explicitly formulated in the early 1930s by the Hungarian-born physicist Eugene P. Wigner and became an intrinsic part of quantum mechanics.

Yang and Lee got the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work, a year after they published their paper.

 Fellow of the American Physical Society  Member of U.S. National Academy of Science  First woman with an honorary doctorate from Princeton University  1959 – AAUW Achievement Award  Research Corporation Award, first female recipient  John Price Wetherill Medal, The Franklin Institute  Comstock Prize in Physics, National Academy of Sciences  Chi-Tsin Achievement Award, Chi-Tsin Culture Foundation  Honorary Fellow Royal Society of Edinburgh

 Scientist of the Year Award, Industrial Research Magazine  Tom W. Bonner Prize, American Physical Society  First female President of the American Physical Society  National Medal of Science  First person to receive the Wolf Prize in Physics  Ellis Island Medal of Honor  First living scientist to have an asteroid named in their honor (2752 Wu Chien-Shiung)  Pupin Medal  Elected one of the first foreign academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

There is only one thing worse than coming home from the lab to a sink full of dirty dishes, and that is not going to the lab at all!