Tsung-Dao Lee was a Chinese-born physicist who won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for his discoveries on the nature of subatomic particles.
- Died: August 4, 2024 (Who else died on August 4?)
- Details of death: Died at his home in San Francisco at the age of 97.
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Tsung-Dao Lee’s legacy
Born in Shanghai, Lee endured disruptions in his education as World War II raged. When, shortly after the war’s end, he was able to study under Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago, he found that he had a unique perspective on science due to the ragtag nature of his previous schooling. In 1953, he moved on to Columbia University, making the college – and the U.S. – his long-term home. It was while he was a newly minted full professor at Columbia that Lee made a discovery that overturned established notions of how subatomic particles work.
Before 1956, scientists thought particles moved as mirror images of each other, with no deviation. This was called the law of conservation of parity. Lee theorized that this wasn’t always true, and he began experiments to test his theory. He found that some particles don’t move as mirror images. His discovery quickly swept the physics world as many other scientists performed experiments to corroborate it.
The following year, Lee was honored with the Nobel Prize in an unusually quick turnaround between the achievement and Nobel recognition. It often takes years or even decades before the impact of a scientific accomplishment is clear enough for a Nobel Prize to be warranted, but the immediate embrace of his discovery made that delay unnecessary. Lee and his co-honoree, Chen Ning Yang, were the first Chinese-born Nobel laureates, and as a naturalized U.S. citizen, he was the youngest American laureate ever, having won the Nobel Prize at the age of 31.
Lee taught at Columbia for decades, continuing to work in physics research even after his 2012 retirement. His later research included such topics as black holes and dark matter.
Lee on his introduction to physics
“I didn’t know anything about physics. I encountered physics during the time when I was without schooling. I accidentally saw some physics books. And there exists laws of nature. That’s a new concept. This is very different from the traditional Chinese training. There wasn’t any. There are laws of nature. There are laws on human conduct. I look at that and saw they exist. Newton’s Laws. So that made me question. So I just developed my own system of judgement, and I think it’s perhaps different from other more fortunate ones.” — from a 2007 interview for Nobelprize.org
Tributes to Tsung-Dao Lee
Full obituary: The New York Times
