RIP Tsung-Dao Lee
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Imagine doing your PhD under Enrico Fermi...
The Chinese-American particle physicist Tsung-Dao Lee died on 4 August at the age of 97. Lee shared half of the 1957 Nobel Prize for Physics with Chen Ning Yang for their theoretical work that overturned the notion that parity is conserved in the weak force – one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Known as “parity violation”, it was was proved experimentally by, among others, Chien-Shiung Wu.
Born on on 24 November 1926 in Shanghai, Lee began studying physics in 1943 at the National Chekiang University (now known as Zhejiang University) and, later, at National Southwest Associated University in Kunming. In 1946 Lee moved to the US to the Univeristy of Chicago on a Chinese government fellowship, doing a PhD under the guidance of Enrico Fermi, which he completed in 1950.
