Professor Tsung-Dao Lee, a famous physicist and the first Chinese Nobel laureate, died in San Francisco on August 4, United States time, at the age of 98. Here, we select and publish an old article from the "History of Science" column of World Science magazine, reviewing the life and love of Tsung-Dao Lee, his academic achievements, and his contributions to China's science and education, and remembering this master of physics with readers.
Suzhou Tiancizhuang Li family
Lee Zhengdao's great-grandfather, Li Ziyi (1844-1904), was a devout Christian, and around 1866 he was sent by missionaries from the United States Supervisory Committee to move from Songjiang Prefecture to Suzhou Province and became the ancestor of the Li family in Suzhou Tiancizhuang.
According to Luo Yuanxu's book "East Becomes West: Seven Chinese Christian Families and a Century of Sino-Western Exchange" (May 2014 Life · Reading · According to the book "The Li family in Suzhou" is one of the seven most famous and influential Christian families in modern Chinese history.
Tsung-Dao's great-grandfather, Li Ziyi, and his grandfather, Li Zhongqin (1870-1941), were well-known Christian pastors and elders of the time, and the father and son had deep ties to the Cunyang Academy, the Boxi Academy, and Soochow University (now Soochow University). Lee's father, Li Junkang (1897-1955), was admitted to Soochow University after graduating from the High School Affiliated to Soochow University in Suzhou in 1915, and transferred to the newly established Department of Agriculture and Forestry of Jinling University in Nanjing the following year (the predecessor of today's Nanjing Agricultural University), and graduated in 1919 as the second class of graduates of Agriculture and Forestry. After graduating from university, he engaged in the fertilizer import trade in Shanghai Foreign Foreign Bank, earning a lot of income and a wealthy family. In 1918, he married Zhang Mingzhang (1900-1983), who was born into a famous Catholic family, in Shanghai.
On November 24, 1926, Lee Tsung-dao was born in Shanghai into a wealthy merchant Christian family with a mix of Chinese and Western cultures, with two older brothers (Li Hongdao and Li Chongdao), two younger brothers (Li Dadao and Li Xuedao) and a younger sister (Li Yayun).
Lee Tsung-dao has been gifted and intelligent since childhood, with a high IQ and EQ. Although there was a strong religious atmosphere in his family, he never believed in religion in his life, having admired natural science since he was a child. Due to social unrest and war turmoil, Lee Tsung-dao has never obtained a formal bachelor's degree in elementary school, junior high school, high school, or university, and his only degree is a doctoral degree from the world-class University of Chicago, which is a rare phenomenon in the world.
The love story of Dr. Tsung-Dao Lee
Yang Zhenning and Ling Ning (1919-2019) were both the sixth batch of Geng-funded students studying in the United States (the examination was opened in August 1943, the list was released in March of the following year, and they left for the United States in August 1945).
Dispatched by the Nationalist Government to develop the atomic bomb "Seed Program", and selected and strongly recommended by Professor Wu Dayou of the Department of Physics of National Southwest Associated University, Lee Tsung-dao was awarded a national scholarship to leave Shanghai on September 2, 1946 to study in the United States, and landed on the North American continent from Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco Bay on September 14. Lee Tsung-dao, who was less than 20 years old at the time, only had a sophomore degree, but he was deeply appreciated and favored by Mr. Wu Dayou.
In the summer of 1947, Ling Ning, Li Zhengdao and Yang Zhenning, young Chinese students who were also studying for a doctorate at the University of Chicago, roamed the West Coast of United States by car, lasting a total of 38 days, picking up Ling Ning's brother Ling Rong, who had just arrived in San Francisco from Shanghai.
On Christmas Eve 1948, Ling Ning invited his sister Ling Xuan (1930-2019), who was studying biology at Saint Mary's College in Kansas (renamed Saint Mary's University since 2003), to come to Chicago to celebrate Christmas. Unfortunately, Ling Ning happened to be absent from Chicago for something, so he specially entrusted his aunt and cousin Huang Wan (1918-2010) to accompany Lee Tsung-dao to the train station to pick up people. Professor Huang Wan, an expert in cardiology, was the brother of Academician Huang Kun (1919-2005), a well-known semiconductor expert, who was a visiting postdoctoral fellow at a cardiovascular research institute in Chicago.
In the fall of 1946, Lee Tsung-dao studied at the University of Chicago, and as a young man, he acquiesced in his determination and decided not to consider marriage and love until he made great achievements in academics.
Lee Tsung-dao and Huang Wan successfully received Miss Ling Xuan at the Chicago train station. Qin Huiqian was born on October 4, 1928 in Shanghai to a prominent Catholic family, and was the fourth daughter of Qin Yijun (1891-1963), a well-known Chinese painter and antique collector. Lee Tsung-dao fell in love with Qin Huicheng at first sight, and boldly abandoned his determination and took the initiative to launch an offensive to pursue the girl he liked.
Ling Ning received his Ph.D. in physical biology from the University of Chicago in 1948, specializing in electrophysiology, and later became an authoritative expert in the field of United States cell physiology. Xuan also received his Ph.D. and became a professor of cell biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). The main winning achievement of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was the patch-clamp technique, which was based on the Graham-Gerard-Ling glass tube microelectrode invented by Ling Ning et al.
On August 23, 1947, Ling Ning, Lee Tsung-dao and Yang Zhenning before the tour departed
On June 3, 1950, Lee Tsung-dao and Qin Huiqian registered their marriage at Chicago City Hall and took a group photo. Soon after marriage, Qin Huiqian gave up continuing her studies and taught her husband and children at home. The couple had two sons together: the eldest son, Li Zhongqing (historian and sociologist, born in 1952), and the second son, Li Zhonghan (chemist, born 1955), both of whom had successful careers and harmonious families. Li Qin and his wife are loyal and unswerving, affectionate, and harmonious, and grow old together. On November 29, 1996, Qin Huiqian died in New York City at the age of 68 due to terminal lung cancer.
Commemorative photo of Lee Tsung-dao and Qin Huicheng's wedding
Professor Tsung-Dao Lee's major academic contributions
In June 1950, Tsung-Dao Lee received a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Chicago with his thesis "Hydrogen Content in White Dwarfs", and was known as the "Doctor of Prodigy", and his doctoral supervisor was Professor Fermi, the winner of the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics and a master of experimental and theoretical all-round physics.
In his doctoral dissertation, Tsung-Dao Lee stated that the hydrogen content in white dwarfs is not more than 1%, and determined that the upper limit mass of the Chandrasekhar limit of white dwarfs is 1.44 times the mass of the sun, which was later recognized by the scientific community, a conclusion that was highly praised by Professor Chandrasekhar. Lee Tsung-do's doctoral dissertation was praised for "exceptional insights and achievements" and won the President's Award.
Chinese-American theoretical physicist Tsung-Dao Lee has a keen physical instinct, a deep vision, a broad vision, and has long been immersed in the wonderful world of physics, claiming that physics is his way of life, and his research covers a wide range of fields, including high-energy physics (i.e., particle physics), quantum field theory, nuclear physics, statistical physics, astrophysics, fluid dynamics (i.e., turbulence theory), many-body physics and solid-state physics (later evolved into condensed matter physics), quantum mechanics, and general relativity. He has made many achievements in theoretical structure and phenomenological analysis, and has made outstanding contributions to the progress and development of contemporary physics, especially high-energy physics.
Li Zhengdao especially admired the famous sentence in Du Fu's "Two Songs of Qujiang": "If you push physics carefully, you must be happy, why use your fame to stumble over this." "Because it accurately depicts the aesthetic conception of the scientist's spirit.
The handsome and dignified Lee Tsung-do is at Chiba
Professor Fermi, Tsung-Dao Lee's mentor at Chiba University
Tsung-Dao Lee is known for his cutting-edge academic contributions to:
Lie-Yang unit circle theorem (1952) in the theory of giant canonical ensemble phase transitions in statistical physics, Lie's model in the theory of renormalization of quantum electrodynamics (QED) (1954, a rare solvable model in the theory of renormalization in quantum field theory), the law of non-conservation of cosmic symmetry in weak interactions (1956), the boson many-body problem (1957), the theory of two-component neutrinos (1957, Salam and Landau also independently proposed the same theory), The problem of discrete symmetry of CPT (1957), the Bose hard sphere theory (1957, which is still one of the explanations of superfluid theory), the KLN theorem (1964) that can eliminate the infrared divergence of quantum field theory, the relativistic heavy ion collider theory (1974), the non-topological soliton field theory (1976) and its related soliton star model (1986), and the random lattice gauge field theory in unified field theory (1982), etc. From 1952 to 1953, Tsung-Dao Lee participated in the research of polaron theory, which directly promoted the birth of the BCS superconductivity theory (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1972), and participated in the creation of a new field of high-energy neutrino physics in 1959.
Since April 1956, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang, young Chinese talents in the United States, have cooperated sincerely to tackle the key problem that puzzled the international physics community at that time - the mystery of θ-τ, boldly breaking through the fetters of the universality of cosmic conservation, and taking the change of the detection quantity from a two-dimensional scalar to a three-dimensional pseudoscalar as a breakthrough, and on October 1 of the same year, he published a classic paper "Questioning the Conservation of Cosmic Symmetry in Weak Interactions", taking the lead in comprehensively and systematically putting forward the Li-Yang hypothesis. At the beginning of the following year, this hypothesis was perfectly experimentally verified by the Chien-shiung Wu group and Gavin Lederman group at Columbia University and the Taylorgdi group at the University of Chicago, and the θ–τ mystery was soon successfully solved in one fell swoop (it was later confirmed that theta meson and τ meson are actually the same particle, that is, the electroneutral K meson), and the Li-Yang hypothesis was upgraded to the law of non-conservation of the universe in weak interactions.
Lee Tsung-dao and Yang Chen-ning in Princeton in 1957
Lee was promoted to professor of physics at Colombia University in 1956 at the age of 30, the youngest professor at Columbia since its founding in 1754. On April 11, 1958, Lee Tsung-dao was elected as the second academician of the "Academia Sinica" in Taipei, when he was less than 32 years old, and still holds the record of the youngest academician elected to the academy. Tsung-Dao Lee was elected United States member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1964, became the first Fermi Chair Professor of Columbia University in the same year, became the highest honorary professor of University Professor at Columbia University in 1984, and was elected as one of the first foreign academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1994. On November 24, 2011, the Department of Physics of Columbia University held a grand retirement ceremony for Tsung-Dao Lee.
As a natural scientist, Lee also has a humanistic sensibility, making friends in the literary and artistic circles, and in his spare time he is particularly fond of Chinese painting, calligraphy, sculpture, poetry and traditional crafts such as ceramics and silk. He believes that the arts and sciences have the same roots, and that science and art are interconnected, like two sides of the same coin.
Professor Tsung-Dao Lee and the Nobel Prize
On October 31, 1957, the Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden announced that Professor Yang Chenning of the School of Mathematics of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and Professor Tsung-Dao Lee of the Department of Physics of Colombia University had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for "their profound study of the law of non-conservation of cosmic symmetry (in weak interactions) and the many important discoveries made about elementary particles as a result." From October 1, 1956, when Li Yang officially published his paper "Questioning the Conservation of Cosmic Symmetry in Weak Interactions" to winning the Nobel Prize for this major theoretical achievement, it took only 13 months, setting a record for the fastest award in the history of Nobel Prize awards, and this record has not been broken to this day.
The King of Sweden awarded Lee the Nobel Prize
At that time, Yang Li held a passport of the Republic of China, which was the first Chinese to win the Nobel Prize. Yang Zhenning and Lee Zhengdao became naturalized in United States on March 23, 1964 and January 21, 1963, respectively, and Yang Zhenning regained his Chinese citizenship on April 1, 2015, renunciating his United States citizenship. Since 19 March 2015, Professors Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee have set the world record for the longest lifetime of any Nobel laureate, which has been going on for more than 60 years.
In the history of the Nobel Prize in Science, United Kingdom physic·ist Sir William Lawrence Bragg (1890-1971) shared the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics with his father at the age of 25. This is followed by four physicists who won the Nobel Prize at the age of 31, including Tsung-Dao Lee:
On November 9, 1933, Germany theoretical physicist Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901.12.05-1976.02.01) was awarded the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics, and on the same day, the Royal Sweden Academy of Sciences also awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics to United Kingdom theoretical physicist Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac (1902.08.08— 1984.10.20) and so on; On November 12, 1936, United States experimental physicist Carl · Carl David Anderson, Jr. (1905.09.03—1991.01.11) and others were awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physics. Given that Heisenberg was awarded the Nobel Prize a year later, it is easy to tell from their date of birth and the date of the award: Lee was under the age of 31 when he received the Nobel Prize, and he is still the second youngest Nobel laureate in science.
Tsung-Dao Lee and China's science and education
Since September 1972, when he and his wife returned to the mainland for the first time to visit and give lectures, Lee Tsung-dao has personally and painstakingly devoted himself to making suggestions and suggestions for the cultivation of talents and the progress and development of basic sciences in China.
Under the impetus of Professor Tsung-Dao Lee, in March 1978, the University of Science and Technology of China launched the first juvenile class system. Tsung-Dao Lee is the initiator and initiator of the U.S.-China Joint Graduate Program in Physics (CUSPEA), and he has spent a lot of energy and effort on it. From 1979 to 1988, a total of 916 CUSPEA students were selected to study for doctoral degrees in United States or Canada, cultivating many high-level physics talents for China and the world, among which Shen Zhixun, Dai Hongjie, Wen Xiaogang, Wang Zhonglin, Xie Xincheng, Luo Minxing, Zhang Donghui, Tang Chao and Guo Hong are the most outstanding representatives.
Under the recommendation and initiative of Tsung-Dao Lee, China established a postdoctoral mobile station system on July 5, 1985, and established the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation on May 30, 1990.
Lee Tsung-dao urged the establishment of the National Natural Science Foundation of China on February 14, 1986, and assisted in the establishment of the China Advanced Science and Technology Center in Beijing on October 17, 1986, and served as the lifelong director.
With the great help of Professor Tsung-Dao Lee, Chinese and American scientists have carried out comprehensive cooperation in the field of high-energy physics since 1979, making China's high-energy physics and related fields rapidly enter the world's advanced ranks. With its initiative and unremitting efforts, the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences built the Beijing Positron Collider (BEPC) on October 24, 1988.
Tsung-Dao Lee promoted and facilitated the completion of China's Daya Bay Nuclear Reactor Neutrino Experiment Project in 2011, which led to a series of remarkable scientific research results in high-energy physics.
On January 23, 1998, the "Qin Huicheng and Lee Zhengdao Chinese College Student Internship and Training Fund" (referred to as the "Qin Huicheng and Lee Zhengdao Chinese College Student Internship and Training Fund" (referred to as the "Qin Huidao Fund") was officially established by Li Zhengdao's family private savings of US$300,000, which was used to support outstanding undergraduate students from Peking University, Fudan University, Soochow University, Lanzhou University, Tsinghua University in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (according to Qin Huicheng's wishes, no less than half of the female students should be women), so that Cheng Zhengcheng scholars can use the summer to obtain professional training and work experience in the field of basic scientific research.
On December 28, 2014, the Tsung-Dao Lee Library was inaugurated at the Minhang Campus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Compare the University of Copenhagen's Niels · Bohr Institute: On November 28, 2016, the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute was established at the Minhang Campus of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
- This article is excerpted from the "History of Science" column of World Science Magazine, Issue 9, 2021; The author of this article, Zhu Anyuan, is a senior engineer at Beijing Jinzi Tianzheng Intelligent Control Co., Ltd. and a Nobel Prize researcher.
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