Nobel Laureate and Physicist Tsung-Dao Lee Dies at 97
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Tsung-Dao Lee, a Chinese-American physicist who became the second-youngest scientist to receive a Nobel Prize in 1957, died Sunday at his home in San Francisco at age 97. This was reported by a Chinese university and a research center.
Lee, whose work advanced the understanding of particle physics, was recognized as one of the great masters in the field, according to a joint obituary released Monday by the Tsung-Dao Lee Institute at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and the Beijing-based China Center for Advanced Science and Technology.
Lee, a naturalized U.S. citizen since 1962, also held the position of 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 his time, whose work displayed “remarkable freshness, versatility and style.”
Lee was born in Shanghai on Nov. 24, 1926, the third of six children to a merchant father, Tsing-Kong Lee, and a mother, Ming-Chang Chang, who was a devout Catholic, according to local newspaper Wenhui Daily.
He attended high school in Shanghai and then went on to study at National Chekiang University in Guizhou province and National Southwest Associated University in Kunming in Yunnan province.
After his sophomore year, he was awarded a scholarship from the Chinese government to pursue graduate studies in the United States.
Between 1946 and 1950, he studied at the University of Chicago under Enrico Fermi, a Nobel laureate in physics.
In the early 1950s, Lee held positions at the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.
His research in areas such as elementary particles, statistical mechanics, astrophysics, and field theory stood out in the field.
In 1953, he joined Columbia University as an assistant professor. Three years later, at age 29, he became the youngest-ever full professor there. He developed a model for studying various quantum phenomena known as the “Lee model.”
In 1957, Lee shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Chen-Ning Yang for their work exploring the symmetry of subatomic particles as they interact with the force that holds atoms together. At 31, Lee was the second-youngest scientist to receive the distinction.
He received many other accolades including the Albert Einstein Award 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 deliver lectures and encourage scientific development, according to state media.