The Queen of Physics – The Legacy of Dr. Chien-Shung Wu

Often nicknamed “the First Lady of Physics,” “the Queen of Physics,” and “the Chinese Madam Curie,” Dr. Chien-Shung Wu was a Chinese-born American physicist that conducted revolutionary work on the Manhattan Project and in experimental physics.

Born near Shanghai, China on May 31, 1912, she was encouraged to pursue science and mathematics as a young girl and focused heavily on her education. After graduating from Nanjing University at the top of her physics class in 1934, she moved to America and earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of California at Berkeley. She then became the first female instructor at Princeton University and joined the infamous nuclear weapons team, the Manhattan Project, at the University of Columbia in 1944. There, she made very important contributions, like discovering a way “to enrich uranium ore that produced large quantities of uranium as fuel for the bomb,” helping “develop the process to split Uranium into its radioactive isotope, Uranium-238,” and improving the measurement of nuclear radiation levels using Geiger counters.

Following World War II, Wu became the leading beta decay and weak interaction physics experimentalist at Columbia University. In her time there, she was asked by two other Chinese-born American physicists to help disprove the “Law of Conservation of Parity,” a hypothetical law in particle physics that said two physical systems, such as atoms, mirror each other and behave identically. She successfully disproved the law using an isotope of Cobalt that undergoes beta decay, which she then designed and conducted an experiment on. Unfortunately, although this finding led to a Nobel Prize for Physics for her male counterparts in 1957, Wu was excluded and went unrecognized, similar to many female scientists at the time.

However, although she was not awarded for her revolutionary work then, she was later recognized and was awarded the first Wolf Prize in Physics. Wu continued to make significant contributions to science later in life, winning awards including the 1960 Achievement Award, the 1964 Comstock Prize, the 1975 Bonner Prize, and the 1975 National Medal of Science. In 1958, her research helped answer important biological questions about blood and sickle cell anemia. She was also the first woman to serve as president of the American Physical Society. Lastly, her book Beta Decay, remains a standard reference for nuclear physicists.

Wu is an important symbol of female brilliance, and her contributions throughout life despite the discrimination she faced serve as an inspiration.

Sources:
https://www.biography.com/scientist/chien-shiung-wu
https://physics.berkeley.edu/news-events/news/20170905/celebrating-women-in-stem-dr-chien-shiung-wu
https://www.atomicheritage.org/profile/chien-shiung-wu