The Chinese Marie Curie

Chien-Shiung Wu, born in 1912, was known as the Chinese Marie Curie.

On the 31st of May 1912, Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu was born in a small village in China called Liuhe, located very close to Shanghai.

(She was a Gemini like me, yay ☺️)

The same year Wu was born, the Chinese Republic was established. Her mam, named Funhua Fan was a teacher. Her dad was an engineer and his name was Zhong-Yi Wu. Chien-Sheung had two brothers, one young and one older than Chien. It was Wu’s dad who supported her into getting a university degree which was uncommon. However, considering that her dad founded the school she attended in her childhood, this is no surprise and also because her mother was a teacher and wanted a solid education for her daughter as well. Wu attended a boarding school after leaving her dads school and graduated top of the class in 1929. Wu was offered a place in a physics degree in a university in China called National Central University.

Wu was inspired by prolific scientist who were women, namely, Dr Marie Curie of Poland, and Dr Jing-Wei Gu an Asian physicist. In fact, Wu was mentored by Dr Gu after she graduated from university for a number of years. It she who encouraged Wu to travel to the USA to get a Masters Degree in Physics.

Wu studied in University of California where she met her future husband. I will get to him a few minutes. Wu studied nuclear physics in her Advanced Degree. She worked alongside the leading physicist Dr Ernest Lawrence and she worked in his Radiation Lab. Incredibly, Wu also got to work alongside J. Robert Oppenheimer and other students. Wu graduated with her Doctorate in 1940 and two years later she married Luke Chia-Liu Yuan who also studied Physics in UC Berkley.

Chien and Luke moved to the East Coast where she taught physics in Smith College then she got offered a job in Princeton University. Shortly afterwards, she became the first woman to teach in instruct in her department.

Around this time, there was building up of anti-Asian movement amongst locals on the West Coast. This was due to Japan’s bombing of Pearl Harbor just before the start of World War II.

Columbia University contacted Wu where she participated in the Manhattan project. This was a classified government initiative during WWII to invent the first atomic weapons in the US with assistance from the country’s leading nuclear scientists. Chien Shiung-Wu contributed significantly to the process of the separation of Uranium by gaseous diffusion. This was a very important process for the atomic bomb. Her work in the initiative was incredibly valuable and she continued to offer her knowledge after the war was over.

Chien had a son who she named Vincen yuan in 1947. Vincent also became a physicist. Chien Wu became a citizen of the US in 1954 and continued to research beta decay at Columbia College. Two years later, Wu, two of Wu’s colleagues and theoretical physicists, Tsung Dao Lee and Chen NIng Yang who sought her assistance in beta decay. They asked her to do an incredibly challenging experiment to prove their theory that there was absolutely no evidence of the Law of Conservation of Parity during Beta Decay. Her experiments used radioactive cobalt at incredibly low temperatures of below zero degrees Fahrenheit. Wu’s work proved that nuclear particles of identical density don’t, in any way, shape or form act the same way during nuclear beta decay. This discovery totally contradicted the law of conservation of parity and supported Chen and Yang’s theory. Both of these men gained the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957, but Wu gained very little recognition or applause. Many textbooks today refer to it as the Wu Experiment.

Wu continued to work in the University and made many important contributions during her lifetime. In 1958, her research assisted to answer important biological research about sickle cell anemia. She was also the first woman to ever become President of the American Physical Society. She was awarded the National Medal of Science, the Comstock Prize and also the first honorary doctorate ever awarded to a woman at Princeton University. In 1978, she won the Wolf Prize in Physics. She also wrote a book called Beta Decay which was published in 1965 and is still a reference for nuclear physicists today.