TAIPEI, Taiwan – Chinese-American physicist Tsung-Dao Lee, who in 1957 became the second youngest scientist to receive a Nobel Prize, died on Sunday at his home in San Francisco at age 97, according to a university and research center. Chinese search.
Lee, whose work advanced understanding of particle physics, was one of the great masters in the field, according to a joint obituary released Monday by the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the China Center for Advanced Science , based in Beijing. and Technology.
Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen since 1962, was also professor emeritus at Columbia University in New York.
Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb, once praised Lee as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists of the time, whose work showed “remarkable freshness, versatility, and style.”
Lee was born in Shanghai on November 24, 1926, the third of six children to a merchant father, Tsing-Kong Lee, and mother, Ming-Chang Chang, who was a devout Catholic, according to the local newspaper. Wenhui Daily.
He attended high school in Shanghai and attended Chekiang National University in Guizhou Province and National Southwest Associated University in Kunming in Yunnan Province.
After his second year, he received a scholarship from the Chinese government to attend graduate school in the United States.
Between 1946 and 1950, he studied at the University of Chicago with Enrico Fermi, Nobel laureate in physics.
In the early 1950s, Lee worked at the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ.
His research into elementary particles, statistical mechanics, astrophysics and field theory, among others, stood out.
In 1953, he joined Columbia University as an assistant professor. Three years later, at age 29, he became the youngest full professor ever. He developed a model for studying various quantum phenomena known as the “Lee model”.
In 1957, Lee was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics along with Chen-Ning Yang for work that explored the symmetry of subatomic particles as they interact with the force that holds atoms together. At age 31, Lee was the second youngest scientist to receive the distinction.
He has won many other awards, including the Albert Einstein Prize in Science, the Galileo Galilei Medal, and the G. Bude Medal, as well as honorary doctorates and titles from organizations around the world.
As China became more open to international exchanges in the 1970s, Lee returned to his home country on repeated visits to give lectures and encourage the development of science, according to state media.
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