| Authorised form of name | Yang; Chen Ning (1922-2025); particle physicist |
| Other forms of name | Frank |
| Dates | 1922-2025 |
| Nationality | Chinese |
| American |
| Place of birth | Hefei, Anhui, Republic of China, Asia |
| Date of birth | 1 October 1922 |
| Place of death | Beijing, People's Republic of China, Asia |
| Date of death | 18 October 2025 |
| Occupation | Particle physicist |
| Research field | Quantum field theory |
| Condensed matter |
| Statistical Mechanics |
| Physics |
| Theoretical physics |
| Particle physics |
| Activity | Education:
Attended elementary school and high school in Beijing; National Southwest Associated University, Kunming BSc 1942; Tsinghua University MSc 1945; University of Chicago, USA, PhD 1948
Career:
Assistant to Enrico Fermi, University of Chicago (1946-1947); Professor, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, USA (1955); became US citizen (1964); Albert Einstein Professor of Physics and first director of the newly founded Institute for Theoretical Physics at State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA (1965); retired from Stony Brook (1999); returned to Beijing as an honorary director of Tsinghua University (1999); helped establish the Theoretical Physics Division at the Chern Institute of Mathematics, Nankai Unversity, Tianjin, China (1986); Albert Einstein Professor of Physics, Emeritus, State university of New York, Stony Brook.
Medals and prizes:
Nobel Prize (Physics) 1957
Rumford Prize, with Robert Mills 1980
National Medal of Science 1986
First laureate of the Oskar Klein Memorial Lecture and Medal 1988
Benjamin Franklin Medal for Distinguished Achievement in the Sciences of the American Philosophical Society 1993
Bower Award 1994
Albert Einstein Medal 1995
Lars Onsager Prize 1999
King Faisal International Prize in the field of Physics 2001
Marcel Grossmann Awards 2015, "for deepening Einstein's geometrical approach to physics in the best tradition of Paul Dirac and Hermann Weyl"
Asian Scientist 100, Asian Scientist 2016 and 2020 |
| Membership category | Foreign Member |
| Date of election | 18/06/1992 |
| Age at election | 69 |
| Relationships | Parents: Luo Meng-hua and Ko-Chuen Yang, mathematician.
Spouse: (m. 1950) Tu Chih-Li (d. 2003); (m. 2005) Weng Fan
Children: Three. |
| OtherInfo | Particle physicist whose research with Tsung-Dao Lee disproved the law of conservation of parity, concerning the interactions of fundamental nuclear particles. The pair shared the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for their theory, which led to important discoveries regarding elementary particles.
Conservation of parity assumes all atomic forces have ‘right–left symmetry’, such that an identical experiment carried out on an atom and its mirror should produce identical results. Chen-Ning and Tsung-Dao suggested that subatomic particles, called K mesons or kaons, did not however conserve parity. Their theory was tested by experiment, which showed that K mesons do indeed have nonsymmetric spin, decaying into different states resulting in the emission of alpha or beta particles. |
| Source | References:
B Bleaney and O V Lounasmaa, 'Nuclear orientation and nuclear cooling experiments in Oxford and Helsinki. Part 2. Progress from 1945 to 1970' in NR 2003 vol 57 pp 323 - 330
Mariana Cook 'Faces of Science' 2005 pp166-167 includes photograph
John Z. Shi, 'John C. Polkinghorne and Chen Ning Yang on the Dialogue between Science and Religion' in Christian Perspectives on Science and Technology, New Series, Vol. 3 (2024), 209-257
The Royal Society Fellows Directory, Professor Chen Yang FRS, [URL: https://royalsociety.org/people/chen-yang-12579/; last accessed: 28/10/2025]
BBC News, Chinese Nobel laureate and physicist Chen Ning Yang dies aged 103, Yang Tian, 18 October 2025, [URL: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxrzzk02plo; last accessed: 29/10/2025]
Nature, Obituaries, Chen-Ning Yang obituary: intuitive physicist whose work was inspired by the beauty of symmetry, Christine Sutton, 24 October 2025, [URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03508-4; last accessed: 29/10/2025]
Physics World, Influential theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate Chen-Ning Yang dies aged 103, Michael Banks, 21 Oct 2025, [URL: https://physicsworld.com/a/influential-theoretical-physicist-and-nobel-laureate-chen-ning-yang-dies-aged-103/; last accessed: 29/10/2025] |
| Code | NA4028 |