Tsung-Dao Lee
Name in native script: 李政道
1926–2024, Shanghai, China, San Francisco, California
Chinese-American theoretical physicist who, with Chen Ning Yang, predicted parity violation and won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Born in Shanghai, Lee left China in 1946 to study at the University of Chicago under Enrico Fermi, earning his doctorate in 1950. He worked at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton before joining Columbia University in 1953, becoming a full professor at twenty-nine — the youngest in Columbia's history at that time.
With Chen Ning Yang he showed that parity had never been tested in weak interactions; the prediction was confirmed experimentally within months, making the pair the first Chinese Nobel laureates. He went on to contribute to field theory and statistical mechanics, and built programs that brought Chinese students to study physics in the United States after the Cultural Revolution.
Nobel-winning work
In the early 1950s the 'θ–τ puzzle' showed two apparently identical particles decaying into states of opposite parity. In 1956, Lee and Yang reviewed all experimental evidence and showed that parity conservation — the invariance of physics under mirror reflection — had never been tested for weak interactions, though it was taken for granted.
Their paper 'Question of Parity Conservation in Weak Interactions' proposed specific experiments. In January 1957, Chien-Shiung Wu observed electrons emitted asymmetrically in the beta decay of polarized cobalt-60 — unambiguous parity violation. The result demolished a supposedly fundamental symmetry of nature and paved the way for the V–A theory of the weak force.
Workplaces: Columbia University, Institute for Advanced Study
United States, China