Dr Chien-Shiung Wu

Dr Chien-Shiung Wu was born in 1912 in a small town near Shanghai. She attended the school her father had started, he was a firm believer in women's education which was very different to the views of his contemporaries. She then studied physics at a university in Shanghai and studied under a professor who had worked with Marie Curie. In 1936 at the age of 24, she moved to San Francisco and enrolled at the university of California, Berkley where she studied for her Ph. D. She married a fellow physicist Luke Yuan in 1942.

Following her Ph.D. she struggled to find a research position at a university and thus became a physics instructor at Princeton University. In 1944 she joined a research team known as the Manhattan Project at Colombia University where she focused her research on radiation detectors. She even managed to successfully point out the reason for a reactor shutting down as Xenon-135 poisoning. Following the second world war she was offered a research position at Colombia university and began researching Beta (ß) decay.

Her research on ß decay would lead to her disproving the law of conservation of parity. The law of conservation of parity stated that two identical mirrored objects must act in the same manner, however Chien-Shiung Wu would prove that this was not the case for ß decay. Her experiments used radioactive Cobalt at near absolute zero. Her colleagues Lee and Yang would receive the 1957 Nobel prize for Physics for this research but her work would not be acknowledged. At a symposium on Women in science she said "I wonder whether the tiny atoms and nuclei, or the mathematical symbols, or the DNA molecules have any preference for either masculine or feminine treatment" which I feel really highlights her struggle within such a male dominated field.

"I wonder whether the tiny atoms and nuclei, or the mathematical symbols, or the DNA molecules have any preference for either masculine or feminine treatment" - Chien-Shiung Wu

Throughout her life she would continue to make significant contributions to science and would receive many awards and honours for her work such as the National medal of science and the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978. Her research has helped solve mysteries about blood and sickle cell anaemia and she was also the first woman to serve as president of the American Physical Society. Chien-Shiung Wu died in 1997 in New York.

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References:

• "Chien-Shiung Wu" from the Atomic Heritage foundation, accessed 23/1/21, https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/chien-shiung-wu

• Image via "Chien-Shiung Wu" by Kelly Richards for the Oxford University museum of Natural History, accessed 23/1/21 https://oumnh.ox.ac.uk/chien-shiung-wu

• "Chien-Shiung Wu" entry in Britannica, accessed 23/1/21, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Chien-Shiung-Wu

• "Overlooked for the Nobel: Chien-Shiung Wu", by Hamish Johnson, for physics world, accessed 23/1/21, https://physicsworld.com/a/overlooked-for-the-nobel-chien-shiung-wu/