By Anna Genna
Anyone who can understand physics, and then do something with it, is someone who deserves recognition. Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu, who worked with beta decay and the Manhattan Project, certainly understood physics.
Born in Liuhe, China, Wu’s father was a strong believer in gender equality, and founded a school for girls. Wu’s education began there, and continued to National Central University (now Nanjing University), graduating top of her class with a degree in physics. With the encouragement of a mentor, Wu immigrated to the United States and enrolled at University of California Berkeley, where she received her PhD in physics.
Wu then taught at Smith College, as well as being the first female physics faculty member at Princeton University. Soon after, she joined Columbia University and the Manhattan Project, which built the atomic bomb in WWII.
After WWII, she continued at Columbia University, and worked with Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang to formulate the Wu Experiment, which proves the conservation of parity does not apply during beta decay. This was a large advancement in the field of physics, causing Lee and Yang to receive the Nobel Prize in physics. However, Wu’s major contribution to the project was not acknowledged, following a trend for many women in science.
She later became the first person to win the Wolf Prize in Physics, the Comstock Prize in Physics, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and much more. Before her death in 1997, she also had an asteroid named after her: 2752 Wu Chien-Shiung.
Not enough can be said about women breaking barriers both socially and in their given fields, and Chien-Shiung Wu managed to do that and so much more.