Why did the relationship between Li Zhengdao and Yang Zhenning break down?

From 65438 to 0946, Li Zhengdao went to the University of Chicago and studied under Fermi, the master of theoretical physics. 1949, Yang Zhenning visited Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, and Oppenheimer, director of EQ (the father of American atomic bomb), invited Li Zhengdao to Princeton.

According to the research of Phoenix Mainland. Com, some unpleasantness happened between them at this time, and the fuse turned out to be the signature order of the paper. According to the convention of English works, the signatures are arranged alphabetically by English surnames, so it should be "Li Zhengdao and Yang Zhenning". It is said that Yang Zhenning made a request, hoping to rank first, because he is four years older than Li Zhengdao.

Later, Li Zhengdao and Yang Zhenning jointly wrote a paper, which laid the foundation for the important discovery of parity non-conservation. 1957, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science announced that they had won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

When they went to Sweden to receive the prize, they had an argument about the ranking. Yang Zhenning hopes that he can walk in front of Li Zhengdao and convince his wife Qin Huita when presenting awards. Qin believes that if this matter is used as a joke, it will make foreigners look down on it and it will be too humiliating. Li Zhengdao reluctantly agreed. But for these requirements of Yang Zhenning, Li Zhengdao felt too boring. Finally, they stopped cooperating.

Oppenheimer, director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, was extremely disappointed because Oppenheimer once said that he liked Li See Zhengdao and Yang Zhenning to discuss physics on campus. The break between them is a great loss for the scientific community in China.

Data expansion:

Parity non-conservation theory;

The law of parity non-conservation refers to the asymmetry of the motion of substances that are mirror images of each other under weak interaction, which was verified by Wu Jianxiong with cobalt 60. Before 1956, the scientific community always thought parity conservation, that is, the mirror image of a particle is exactly the same as its own properties.

1956, scientists found that the spin, mass, lifetime and charge of θ and γ mesons are exactly the same. Most people think it is the same particle, but θ decay produces two π mesons and γ decay produces three, which means they are different particles.

1956, Li Zhengdao and Yang Zhenning boldly asserted that τ and θ are exactly the same particles (later called k mesons), but their motion laws are not necessarily exactly the same in the weak interaction environment. Generally speaking, if these two same particles look at each other in the mirror, their decay patterns in the mirror and outside the mirror are actually different! In scientific language, the "θ-τ" particle is parity-nonconservative under weak interaction.

At first, "θ-τ" particles were only regarded as a special exception, and people were still unwilling to give up the parity conservation of the whole microscopic particle world. Shortly thereafter, Wu Jianxiong, an experimental physicist of Chinese descent, verified the "parity non-conservation" with a clever experiment. Since then, "parity non-conservation" has really been recognized as a basic scientific principle with universal significance.

Wu Jianxiong used two sets of experimental devices to observe the decay of cobalt 60. At a very low temperature (0.0 1K), she used a strong magnetic field to make the spin direction of cobalt 60 in one set of devices to the left, and the spin direction of cobalt 60 in the other set of devices to the right. Cobalt 60 in these two devices is a mirror image of each other.

The experimental results show that the number of electrons emitted by cobalt 60 in these two devices is very different, and the directions of electron radiation cannot be symmetrical with each other. The experimental results show that parity is not conserved in weak interaction.