Contributions and Distinctions
Known as the “First Lady of Physics,” Wu was a recipient of the National Medal of Science in 1975, the inaugural Wolf Prize in 1978, the Research Corporation Award, the John Price Weatherill Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Cyrus B. Comstock Award in 1964, and the Tom Bonner Prize of the American Physical Society. Furthermore, she was a pioneer: in 1952 she became the first woman to hold a tenured faculty position at Columbia University, the first woman to receive a D. Sc. degree from Princeton University in 1958, and the first woman to lead the American Physical Society as its president in 1975.
Biographical Sketch
Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997) was born in Liuhe, Taicang in Jiangsu province, China. After completing her undergraduate studies in Physics at the National Central University in Nanking in 1932. In 1936, she travelled to San Francisco and enrolled at UC Berkeley where she completed her PhD in 1940 under the supervision of Ernest Lawrence (Nobel laureate 1939) and Emilio Segrè (Nobel laureate 1959). Two other Nobel laureates, Luis Alvarez and Glenn Seaborg were members of her five member dissertation committee.
She was unable to find a tenure track position and served as an instructor in physics at Princeton University and Smith College. In 1944 she joined the Manhattan Project at Columbia University. She would remain at Columbia until her retirement in 1981. In 1952, she was promoted to associate professor with tenure thereby becoming the first woman to be tenured at that institution. She supervised a total of 33 graduate students throughout her long distinguished career.
Controversially, the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 was awarded to Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang for their theoretical work on the law of conservation of parity. Chien-Shieng Wu wasn’t given any credit despite providing experimental proof of their law at their request in 1956. Wu was subsequently nominated for the Nobel prize on multiple occasions without success.
The recognition of Chien-Shiung Wu’s talents and accomplishments have been extraordinary: from election to the US National Academy of Sciences in 1958 and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1994, recipient of 9 honorary doctorates, the National Medal of Science in 1975, recipient of multiple medals of honor, and the first female physicist ever honored by the US Postal Service with a stamp. She remained active in the field of physics until her passing in 1997.