Tsung-Dao Lee is a Chinese American physicist who did work on high energy particle physics, symmetry principles, and statistical mechanics, parity violation, the Lee Model, relativistic heavy ion physics, nontopological solitons and soliton stars.Now Tsung-Dao Lee is a physics professor at Columbia University and Director Emeritus of the RIKEN-BNL Research Center at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Education
He received his middle school education in Shanghai and Jiangxi. He was educated at the Kiangsi Middle School in Kanchow, Kiangsi, from which he graduated in 1943.
Initially, Lee registered as a student in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Very quickly, Lee's talent was discovered and his interest in physics grew rapidly. Several physics professors, including Shu Xingbei and Kan-Chang Wang, largely guided Lee, and he soon transferred into the Department of Physics of Zhejiang University, where he studied in 1943–1944.
The Japanese invasion forced him to flee to Kunming, Yunnan; here he attended the National Southwest University where he met Chen Ning Yang, who in 1957 was to share the Nobel Prize with him. Being a most promising student in physics he was, in 1946, awarded a Chinese Government Scholarship, which took him to the University of Chicago, where he gained his Ph. D. degree in 1950 on his thesis Hydrogen Content of White Dwarf Stars.
Career
In 1953, he became an assistant professor at Columbia University. Lee was then fast becoming a widely known scientist, especially for his work in statistical mechanics and in nuclear and subnuclear physics, having solved some problems of long standing and of great complexity.Apart from the subject of parity non-conservation-which earned him the Nobel Prize -and statistical mechanics and nuclear physics mentioned earlier, his investigations also comprised field theory, astrophysics, and turbulence.
Three years later, at age 29, Lee became the university's youngest full professor.The next year, being recipient of the Nobel Award at barely 31 years of age, he became the second youngest scientist ever to receive this distinction.Together with Dr. Yang, Lee wrote several prominent articles in The Physical Review.
In 1999, Lee established the Chun-Tsung Endowment Fund in Beijing. The Chun-Tsung scholarships are awarded to undergraduates, usually in their 2nd or 3rd year, at five universities in China. Students selected for such scholarships are named "Chun-Tsung Scholars"
In 2000 the World Journal (a Chinese newspaper in North America) included Lee in its list of the "Most Notable 100 North American Chinese of the Century." The Nobel Prize winner continues to work as a professor at Columbia and is involved in a variety of physics research projects.
Religion
“I am not religious, but I am happy to be elected to the Pontifical Academy,” Lee said. “While religion is based on faith and science is based on rational thinking, it is gratifying to be assured that scientists and people of faith are not disassociated from each other. I believe that today’s scientific discoveries may be able to help the world. But in order to make our world a better one, we need our convictions. Science alone is not sufficient.”
He has been named a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope John Paul II. The Pope will give Lee the insignia of his appointment at the academy’s headquarters in Rome on November 7, as part of the ceremonies to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the founding of the academy.
