Who knows the information of Yang Zhenning?

Yang Zhenning was born in Hefei, Anhui on 1 June+10/October1(later, the date of birth was mistakenly written on the passport of going abroad as June 65438+September 22, 0922). He was born less than one year old, and his father Yang Wuzhi went abroad to study in the United States at public expense. At the age of 4, his mother began to teach him to recognize Chinese characters. 1 For many years, she taught him 3000 words. At the age of 50, Yang Zhenning recalled:' Now the words I know add up, and it is estimated that they will not exceed twice that number.'

1928 When Yang Zhenning was 6 years old, his father came back from America. As soon as he saw him, he asked him if he had studied. He said that he had read it. What books have you read? Read Long Wen Whip Shadow. Tell him to recite it, and he will recite it all. Yang Zhenning recalled: "My father then asked me what this book meant, and I couldn't explain it at all. However, I remember he gave me a pen, which I have never seen before.

When Yang Zhenning was in primary school, he did well in math and Chinese. He was admitted to the National The National SouthWest Associated University before graduating from high school. He was only 16 years old at 1938. 1942, 20-year-old Yang Zhenning graduated from university and immediately entered the research institute in Tsinghua University. Two years later, he got a master's degree with honors and was allowed to study in the United States at public expense. He went to the United States to study at the University of Chicago on 1945, and received his doctorate on 1948.

From 65438 to 0949, Yang Zhenning entered the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies as a postdoctoral fellow and began to cooperate with Li Zhengdao to study particle physics. During this period, he encountered many puzzling phenomena and unsolvable problems. They boldly doubted and carefully verified, and finally overturned the law of parity conservation, so that the confusion disappeared and the problem was solved. Yang Zhenning said in his Nobel lecture in 1957: "At that time, physicists found that their situation was like a person groping for a way out in a dark room. He knew that in a certain direction, there must be a door to get him out of trouble. "But in which direction?" It turns out that the direction is parity conservation law, which does not apply to weak interaction. '

Yang Zhenning has made extensive contributions to physics, including particle physics, statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics. In addition to discovering parity non-conservation with Li Zhengdao, Yang Zhenning first proposed the "Young-Mills Gauge Field" with R.L. Mills, and established the "Young-Backus Equation" with American physicist and Nobel Prize winner R.Baxter. E.Segre, and praised Yang Zhenning as "one of the three theoretical physicists who can be called all-rounders in the world for decades".

Yang Zhenning remembers the legacy of his father Yang Wuzhi: "When you are alive, you should remember the gratitude of your country". He was the first American scientist to visit China in the summer of 197 1. He said: "As a Chinese-American scientist, I have the responsibility to help these two countries that are closely related to me build a bridge of understanding and friendship. I also think we should make some contributions to the development of science and technology in China. "

Yang Zhenning said this and did the same. Over the past six years, he has frequently shuttled between China and the United States and conducted many fruitful academic exchanges. He wrote two such poems:' the clouds, water, wind and thunder are changing rapidly, and natural selection is competing.'

People praised Yang Zhenning, the Nobel Prize winner who spent half a century at the forefront of theoretical physics, as a scientist with perseverance and mathematical genius. He devoted himself to revealing the symmetry of nature, which is often hidden behind the chaotic experimental physical results.

Yang Zhenning has long been committed to the cross-study of physics and mathematics. In this field, a set of beautiful equations can be a source of inspiration, and even insight into how the physical world works before there is experimental evidence. This is a world that is difficult for laymen to understand. The blackboard is full of equations with Greek letters, the taste and style of seeking to solve problems with mathematics, and the heartfelt inspiration of seeking to describe the physical world with correct language.

Physicist Dyson said at an academic seminar held by Xi Shi for Yang Zhenning's retirement last year: "Yang Zhenning's wonderful taste in mathematics shines in all his works. This makes his unimportant work a beautiful work of art, and his profound thinking a masterpiece. " This made him "see the mysterious structure of nature more deeply than others".

Yang Zhenning has long hair, but he looks much younger than his actual age. He still shuttles between new york and the Far East. He has close ties with universities in Hong Kong and Beijing, and is the chairman of a theoretical physics center in Seoul, South Korea.

In a wide-ranging talk about his life and times, Yang Zhenning talked about his physics career and his regret that he failed to engage in research in certain fields. Yang Zhenning also talked about his childhood in China and his long-term efforts to bridge the scientific and cultural differences between the United States and his motherland. Yang Zhenning talked about his concern that the rift between China and the United States would widen and the difficulties brought to Asian and Asian-American scientists by the recent investigation into Taiwan Province-born physicist Li Wenhe's alleged espionage. Sino-US relations began to thaw on 197 1, and Yang Zhenning returned to Chinese mainland for the first time after coming to the United States as a graduate student on 1945. He met other leaders of the late Zhou Enlai and China and helped develop scientific cooperation between the two countries. He is worried that these cooperation will be dangerous.

At that time, when he came back from a trip abroad, the FBI and the CIA often visited him. When CIA officials went to meet for the first time, Yang asked his secretary to record their conversation to avoid misunderstanding. Yang Zhenning continued to keep close contact with China. He said, "The FBI and CIA have not bothered me recently."

Yang Zhenning is most concerned with science rather than politics. He told his own experience: how a young student from a backward city in a remote area of China was lucky enough to participate in one of the most important ideological revolutions in the 20th century. This revolution is an attempt to understand the infinite diversity of nature in a unified way, from the explosion of chaotic planets to the trembling of electrons around the nucleus.

Yang Zhenning became famous for the first time. That year, he and Li Zhengdao published an article that overthrew a central message of physics-parity conservation? Elementary particles behave exactly like their mirror images. Because of this work, they won the Nobel Prize of 1957.

In the long run, the pioneering work of Yang Zhenning and 1954 Mills is more important. That year, both of them worked in Brookhaven National Laboratory. They put forward a theoretical structure called non-Abelian gauge field. Facts have proved that this is the key to unify the description of force and elementary particles. Machinu, a theoretical physicist in Brookhaven, said: "When it was written in 1954, it caused a great controversy. Some people think that this has nothing to do with the physical world. " At that time, Yanghe Cotton Mill did not continue to develop. However, it turns out that this mathematics extracted from the abstract world of differential geometry and fiber bundle is just a particle exchange place to describe the intermediate forces in major interactions such as magnetism, electricity, strong nuclear force and perhaps. Dyson said: "I want to say that the most important thing in Yang Zhenning's work is that norms often prove to be much more important than his and Li Zhengdao's work on parity."

The relationship between Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao became more and more tense. They broke up on 1962. Yang Zhenning refused to talk about what made their relationship tense. He said: "This is a very disappointing thing in my life. I want to say that this is a tragedy. " The two of them have not spoken for decades.

Yang Zhenning is rooted in mathematics, but he points out that his life's work is not a metaphysical game divorced from the real world. In the late 1940s, when he first went to the Graduate School of the University of Chicago, he planned to become an experimental physicist. But he soon realized that his hands-on ability was poor. Colleagues in the laboratory joked: "Where there is an explosion, there is Yang Zhenning."

Saos, an experimental physicist, is the director of Brookhaven National Laboratory. He said, "Yang Zhenning is a man with a great mathematical mind. However, due to his early education, he was very interested in the details of the experiment. He likes to talk to experimenters and enjoy beautiful experiments. "

The biggest challenge for physicists is still to put forward a unified theory, which is applicable to both the big kingdom dominated by gravity and the small kingdom dominated by quantum. Physicists made progress in this field in the 1970s. They put forward a theory called the standard model. However, the standard model does not consider gravity.

At present, string theory may overcome this shortcoming. After modification, this theory needs ten or eleven dimensions of time and space, instead of the familiar four-dimensional time and space, that is, one dimension of time plus three dimensions of solid geometry. String theory has been put forward for more than 20 years and is very popular among young theoretical physicists. However, Yang Zhenning disagreed with this theory in his later years. Yang Zhenning doubts whether string theory or its derivative theory can put all the objective realities into a simple package.

Yang Zhenning said: "String theory has not been proved by experiments. Too amorphous, too vague. " Part of the problem is that in order to explore the influence of strings, extremely high energy and stronger particle accelerators are needed. How to write work theory and do ten-dimensional calculation is also a problem.

Yang Zhenning proposed that physics is going through a transitional period. Constantly searching for faster and smaller computer chips and other applied research will attract young people more than basic research. He said: "Obviously, in the next 30 to 50 years, people will pay more attention to the application of physics. The reason is not because all the basic problems have been solved, but because it is becoming more and more expensive to explore the basic structure of matter in depth. " He added that in 2005, Congress decided to suspend the construction of the superconducting super collider, which signaled the end of the era of abundant funds for high-energy physics. Superconducting Super Collider is a basic particle accelerator to be built in Texas, USA, with a diameter of 54 miles.

Yang Zhenning predicted that the actual demand of computer industry will promote the development of physics between micro and macro. He admits that many analysts have predicted that the 265,438+0 century will be the century of biology, just as the past 20th century was called the century of physics. What environment made Yang Zhenning play an important role in the dominant physics? According to him, luck is as important as ambition in his success.

Yang Zhenning lived in a society more like the Middle Ages than modern times in his early years. He benefited from a lucky family environment and contacts with colleagues and scholars. These paved the way for him to move towards a broader world of knowledge and culture. In return, he constantly strives to establish a first-class research center in Asia.

Yang Zhenning grew up in Hefei, a walled city in central China. At that time, the streets of this city were unpaved, and the gates were so narrow that the first cars came in the 1930s. Most residents are illiterate. Due to occlusion, Yang Zhenning didn't see bananas for the first time until he was 6 years old.

Yang Zhenning's father is a math teacher in a local middle school. He passed the scholarship exam and was able to go abroad to study at the University of Chicago. After returning to China, he taught at Xiamen University and later went to Tsinghua University.

Yang Zhenning himself followed his father on the academic road. He said: "I am lucky that millions of people my age will either starve to death or face warlords." He lives in an academic community in Beiping, immersed in a community that attaches importance to research and knowledge. His father soon discovered that his son was a math genius, but he didn't teach him math directly. Yang Zhenning said: "My father's philosophy is' Don't worry'." When chatting, he occasionally asks his son a math problem. But my father also realized that education needs to be balanced. When Yang Zhenning finished the first grade of middle school, his father invited a colleague to teach him China's ancient prose. After two summers of intense study, young Yang Zhenning was able to recite all the works of Mencius, a disciple of Confucius.

1937 During the Japanese invasion, Yang Zhenning's grandfather was forced to leave Beiping to teach in The National SouthWest Associated University. Yang Zhenning's father continued his good fortune. Decades later, the young Yang Zhenning also entered this university and was taught by some of the most outstanding scientists in China at that time. Some of them later went to America, including Chen Shengshen. Chen Shengshen has retired from the University of California, Berkeley, and many people think that he is the most important differential geometer alive today.

During his stay in Kunming, Yang Zhenning began to improve his English. He decided not to use a dictionary to read English novels. The first novel he chose was Stevenson's Treasure Island. There are slang words related to the sea in this novel, so it is difficult to understand. It took him a week to finish reading the book, and then he went on to read Austin's Pride and Prejudice. After getting familiar with these two books, Yang Zhenning said, "It will be easy in the future."

Yang Zhenning went to the western world for another reason: he worshipped Franklin, an early American scientist and politician, whose autobiography inspired Yang Zhenning. After going to America, he was named Frank, and the English name of his first child was Franklin.

1945 Yang Zhenning's father won a boxer indemnity scholarship and went to the United States. Princeton University accepted Yang Zhenning's father, but he wanted to learn from the talented Italian physicist Fermi, so he went to the University of Chicago and wrote his doctoral thesis under the guidance of Taylor, who was later called the father of the hydrogen bomb. After the paper is written, there are only four pages. Taylor persuaded Yang Zhenning that, in any case, a four-page doctoral thesis was always too short, and he was asked to lengthen it. He did and added it to page 23. After making outstanding achievements in physics, he turned to the Far East. Yang Zhenning will donate his manuscripts and letters to the Chinese University of Hong Kong instead of new york State University in Xi Shi. He is a visiting professor at China University. Yang Zhenning does not rule out the possibility of moving back to China, because he and his wife Du Zhili, who have been married for 50 years, will get better care when they return home. ? Recently, Zhili had three tumor operations in the hospital of State University at Stony Brook, and the results were good. Yang Zhenning still feels at home in Long Island. He doesn't want to leave his three grown-up children. All three of them got degrees in science. Yang Zhenning said: "They are Americans. They have little contact with China culture. " Guangnuo, the eldest son, graduated from the Computer Science Department of the University of Michigan and is now a financial consultant in Westchester County, New York. The second son, Guangyu, is a Ph.D. in chemistry and lives in new york. He analyzes the chemical industry for J.P.Marg Financial Company. My daughter Youli is a doctor in Livingston County, Montana.

Yang Zhenning became an American citizen on 1964. He said: "We had a good time in America. We have many friends here. We are very comfortable in both societies. "

At the end of the academic seminar held by Xi Shi for his retirement, Yang Zhenning talked about a "great and far-reaching discovery" he made at the age of 60: "Life is limited". He read a poem by Li Shangyin, a poet in China in the 9th century: to see the sun, for all his glory, buried by the coming night.

At the beginning of the 20th century, another writer was also a friend of Yang Zhenning's father? Zhu Ziqing, change these two lines to: If you can see the sun, though it is brilliant, why are you depressed at dusk? After a lifetime of mysterious thinking about nature, Yang Zhenning believes that this change more accurately describes his thoughts in his later years.