Nuclear Physics => the Wu Eperiment

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

She was born in the Jiangsu province, China in 1912.

From 1930 to 1934, Wu studied at National Central University (now known as Nanjing University) and first majored in mathematics but later transferred to physics.

She became involved in student politics. Relations between China and Japan were tense at this time, and students were urging the government to take a stronger line with Japan. She led protests that included a sit-in at the Presidential Palace in Nanjin

After her education in China, she embarked for the United States with a female friend and chemist from Taicang, Dong Ruo-Fen, on the SS President Hoover in August 1936. Wu would become a US citizen in 1954.

In the US, towards the end of WWII, Wu worked on the secret Manhattan Project, developing the first atomic bomb, where she helped develop the process for separating uranium into uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion.

Wu also used her findings in radioactive uranium separation to build the standard model for producing enriched uranium to fuel the atomic bombs at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee facility as well as build innovative Geiger counters.

Later, she became best known for conducting the Wu experiment, which proved that parity is not conserved. This work on beta-decay revolutionized nuclear physics and confirmed the theory of parity violation.

She rushed into a train station on a snowy Christmas Eve in 1956 to catch the last train to New York City, to get her groundbreaking experiment results published quickly.

This Wu Experiment discoveries resulted in her colleagues Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang winning the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, while Wu herself was awarded the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978.

Her expertise in experimental physics evoked comparisons to Marie Curie. Her nicknames include the “First Lady of Physics”, the “Chinese Marie Curie” and the “Queen of Nuclear Research”.

She died in 1997 at age 84 in New York City, U.S.