Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu

Quick Facts

Significance:

Chinese-American, female physicist with the Manhattan Project

Place of Birth:

Shanghai, China

Date of Birth:

May 31, 1912

Place of Death:

New York City, United States

Date of Death:

February 16, 1997

Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu, a Chinese American physicist, worked at Columbia University during the Manhattan Project. She helped develop the gaseous diffusion process that separated uranium into U-235 and U-238 isotopes, the same process used at the K-25 Plant in Oak Ridge.  

Born in 1912, Wu grew up near Shanghai, China. As a child, she attended a school started by her father and went on to study physics at a university in Shanghai. After graduating, she moved to San Francisco in 1936. Wu completed her PhD in 1940 at the University of California, Berkeley, and started working for the Manhattan Project four years later. Her position at the Substitute Alloy Materials Lab at Columbia University focused on radiation detectors. She also helped in identifying xenon-135 poisoning as the reason Hanford’s B Reactor shut down soon after it began operating.  

After the war, Wu continued to research beta decay. In 1956, she conducted the “Wu experiment,” testing the parity conservation theories of fellow Columbia physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang. Wu’s experiment proved their theories correct, and contributed significantly to particle physics and the development of the Standard Model as a result. In 1957, Lee and Yang received the Nobel Prize for Physics, while Wu received nothing. The science community rallied around her, with Lee and Yang trying to nominate her for future prizes. By 1966, she had received at least seven Nobel nominations. In 1978, she won the inaugural Wolf Prize for her role in the discovery.  

Speaking at a symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1964, Wu said to her audience, “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.” In addition to speaking out against gender discrimination, Wu also advocated for human rights issues, especially in China.