Yang Zhenning is one of the greatest scientists in the world. What achievements has he made in what fields?

The Historical Position of Theoretical Physics

Yang Zhenning's contribution in the field of theoretical physics is very outstanding, and it can be said that his achievement is the greatest achievement of China people in the field of theoretical physics.

(Some people may ask for leverage, such as Qian Xuesen, Deng Jiaxian and others? I want to emphasize here that these scientists are particularly great, but their contribution to China's scientific cause is very great. However, the outstanding contributions of Qian Xuesen and Deng Jiaxian are in the field of applied physics, not pure theoretical research, and the two cannot be confused. Therefore, it cannot be said that they have made outstanding contributions in the field of theoretical physics. )

But we objectively evaluate that there are three great gods in the whole history of theoretical physics, that is, Newton, Maxwell and Einstein. They established a theoretical system through their own efforts. So these three great gods are undoubtedly the first echelon scientists in the history of physics. How about Yang Zhenning?

In fact, he is in the second echelon. There are many famous scientists in this echelon, such as Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac, Schrodinger and others. In the picture below, besides Einstein, there are quite a few people in the second echelon.

In addition to the founders of quantum mechanics, there are also a number of founders of the standard model of particle physics, such as Fermi (this guy actually has two heads, and quantum mechanics also has his share), Higgs, Weinberg, Feynman, gherman and, of course, Yang Zhenning, whose contributions can not be ignored and played a decisive role. In addition, there should be some founders of sub-disciplines in this echelon, such as Boltzmann and others.

As for who is ahead and who is behind in the second echelon, we think that different people have different views and everyone's evaluation criteria are different, and the struggle is fruitless. I'll just say my personal opinion. I think Yang Zhenning can probably rank in the top ten of the second echelon. There may be Bohr, Fermi, Heisenberg, Galileo and others ahead. (Personal opinion only)

school achievement

Then why does Yang Zhenning have such a high historical position?

In fact, this is related to his outstanding scientific achievements. He has about a dozen outstanding scientific achievements in theoretical physics, mainly focusing on statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, particle physics and field theory. This is why after Yang Zhenning arrived in Tsinghua, Tsinghua was in the forefront in almost all these fields, especially statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics.

The most outstanding scientific achievement is the Young Mills Theory, which he and Mills jointly founded. So what is Jan Mills' theory?

Theoretical physicists have always had a great dream, that is, to unify theories. What they do is actually a "unified" thing. Newton unified the physics of heaven and earth; Maxwell unified electricity and magnetism; Einstein unified time and space, mass and energy. Therefore, scientists have been thinking about whether all physical phenomena can be explained by one theory. And there will be interaction between matter and matter. So the theory has always been to explain the interaction reasonably. In the universe, there are four known functions.

That is to say, according to the current cognition, as long as these four functions are unified, the theory of grand unification will be completed. The standard model of particle physics realizes the unification of strong force, weak force and electromagnetic force. But gravity has not been included so far, but it is also the theory closest to the grand unified theory. (The scope here refers to the theory that has been accepted by the mainstream scientific community and can be proved by experiments. )

Among them, Young Mills theory is the skeleton theory of the standard model of particle physics, which shows its importance. Five scientists won the Nobel Prize for using Jan Mills' theory to solve powerful problems. I sent it twice, two at a time and three at a time. )

Yang Zhenning's theory of winning the Nobel Prize is that parity is not conserved. What's the use?

In fact, before this theory and experiment were confirmed, scientists always thought that parity was conserved, and the degree of this belief was similar to 1+ 1=2, so that scientists were always puzzled when solving weak forces and could not get any substantive progress. Later, after Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao proposed that parity was not conserved, Wu Jianxiong and other experimental physicists completed related experiments.

The following year, Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao won the Nobel Prize, and the speed of winning the prize was enough to illustrate the importance of this discovery.

The non-conservation of the universe has opened up a situation in which weak forces have never been overcome. Scientists put forward the unified theory of weak current on the basis of Jan Mills' theory. Therefore, Yang Zhenning has made great contributions to the establishment of the standard model of particle physics.

These are just two scientific achievements of Yang Zhenning. In addition, for example, the Youngster equation is also extremely important, so I won't go into details here. It is based on these scientific achievements that he can rank among the outstanding theoretical physicists. Of course, some people compare him with the three scientists in the first echelon. Personally, I think this is a bit excessive, because Yang Zhenning did not create the standard model of particle physics alone, but the standard model of particle physics is the result of the joint efforts of a group of scientists. So he didn't complete a major theory alone, so he can't compare with Newton, Maxwell and Einstein. But this does not prevent Yang Zhenning from being considered as one of the greatest scientists after Einstein.