40 Facts About Chien-Shiung Wu

Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-American particle and experimental physicist who made significant contributions in the fields of nuclear and particle physics.

Chien-Shiung Wu is best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which proved that parity is not conserved.

Chien-Shiung Wu was born in the town of Liuhe, Taicang in Jiangsu province, China, on May 31,1912, the second of three children of Wu Zhong-Yi and Fan Fu-Hua.

Chien-Shiung Wu participated in the 1913 Second Revolution while in Shanghai and moved to Liuhe after its failure.

Chien-Shiung Wu established the Ming De School for girls with himself as principal.

Chien-Shiung Wu did not play outside like the other children but instead would listen to the newly invented radio for pleasure and knowledge.

Chien-Shiung Wu enjoyed poetry and Chinese classics such as the Analects, and western literature on democracy that her father promoted at home.

Chien-Shiung Wu went to teach at a public school in Shanghai, the president of which was the famous philosopher Hu Shih.

Chien-Shiung Wu felt that her background and training in Suzhou Women's Normal School were insufficient to prepare her for majoring in science.

Chien-Shiung Wu's father encouraged her to plunge ahead, and bought her three books for her self-study that summer: trigonometry, algebra, and geometry.

Chien-Shiung Wu led protests that included a sit-in at the Presidential Palace in Nanjing, where the students were met by Chiang Kai-shek.

Chien-Shiung Wu became a researcher at the Institute of Physics of the Academia Sinica.

Chien-Shiung Wu's supervisor was Gu Jing-Wei, a female professor who had earned her PhD abroad at the University of Michigan and encouraged Wu to do the same.

Chien-Shiung Wu became an important role model to the young Wu, who developed confidence and was sometimes blunt and honest when giving advice to close friends.

Chien-Shiung Wu met physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan, a middle-class grandson from the concubine of Yuan Shikai.

Chien-Shiung Wu quickly became his favorite student and the two conducted studies on beta decay, including xenon, which would provide important results in the future of nuclear bombs.

Chien-Shiung Wu used the same room next door, and was called "Gee Gee" [Wu's nickname at Berkeley].

Chien-Shiung Wu was the most talented and most beautiful experimental physicist I have ever met.

Chien-Shiung Wu investigated the first study using beta-emitting phosphorus-32, a radioactive isotope easily produced in the cyclotron that Lawrence and his brother John H Lawrence were evaluating for use in cancer treatment and as a radioactive tracer.

Chien-Shiung Wu could be quiet and shy in front of strangers, but very confident and alert in front of physicists and graduate students.

Chien-Shiung Wu was so passionate and excited whenever "China" and "democracy" were referred to, as democracy meant so much in the 1940s.

Chien-Shiung Wu is preparing to return and contribute to the rebuilding of China.

Chien-Shiung Wu's plans changed when the Second World War began.

Chien-Shiung Wu found the job frustrating, as her duties involved teaching only, and there was no opportunity for research.

Chien-Shiung Wu appealed to Lawrence, who wrote letters of recommendation to a number of universities.

Chien-Shiung Wu accepted a job from Princeton University in New Jersey as the first female faculty member in the history of the physics department, where she taught officers of the navy.

Chien-Shiung Wu lived in a dormitory there, returning to Princeton on the weekends.

Chien-Shiung Wu would remain at Columbia for the rest of her career, and was first named associate professor in 1952, which made her the first woman to become a tenured physics professor in university history.

Chien-Shiung Wu missed China deeply, and would often go with Luke to buy fabric to make her own qipao, which she always wore under her lab coat as a way to remember the country.

Chien-Shiung Wu added detergent to the copper sulfate to produce a thin, even film.

Chien-Shiung Wu then demonstrated that the discrepancies observed were the result of experimental error; her results were consistent with Fermi's theory.

Chien-Shiung Wu was nominated at least seven times before 1966, when the Nobel committee announced they would conceal their list of nominees to avoid further public controversy.

Chien-Shiung Wu would do this while working from 8 am to 7 or 8 in the evening, with her pay still very low until it was drastically increased after Robert Serber was installed as the new chairman.

Chien-Shiung Wu's discoveries proved to be important in physics and her work even crossed over to biology and medicine, where her contributions became extremely influential to certain studies on the molecular changes in red blood cells that caused sickle cell disease or anemia.

Chien-Shiung Wu saw her uncle, Wu Zhou-Zhi, and younger brother, Wu Chien-Hao, on a trip to Hong Kong in 1965.

Chien-Shiung Wu was greeted by Zhou Enlai, who personally apologized for the destruction of the tombs.

Chien-Shiung Wu researched on the molecular changes in the deformation of hemoglobins that cause this form of anemia.

Chien-Shiung Wu protested the imprisonment in Taiwan of the in-laws of physicist Kerson Huang in 1959 and of the journalist Lei Chen in 1960.

Chien-Shiung Wu retired in 1981 and became a professor emerita.

Chien-Shiung Wu became renowned for her steadfast promotion of teaching STEM subjects to all students regardless of gender or any other discriminating cause.