Chien-Shiung Wu Timeline

At Berkeley, Wu worked under Ernest Lawrence, who would win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1939 for his invention of the cyclotron particle accelerator. Lawrence described Wu as 'the most talented female experimental physicist he had ever known.'

Image source: Ernest Lawrence

Wu presented her PhD thesis, which had two separate parts presented in very neat fashion. Her advisor Emilio Segrè recognized her brilliance and compared her to Marie Curie, saying she was more 'worldly, elegant, and witty.'

Image source: Emilio Segrè

Wu completed her PhD at Berkeley in June 1940 and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the prestigious US academic honor society.

Image source: Phi Beta Kappa

After the end of the war in August 1945, Wu accepted a position as associate research professor at Columbia University, where she would remain for the rest of her career.

Enrico Fermi had published his theory of beta decay in 1934, but Alvarez's experiment had produced conflicting results. In 1949, Wu completely established Fermi's theory, showing how beta decay works in creating electrons, neutrinos, and positrons.

Image source: Beta decay

In November 1949, Wu experimented with the conclusions of the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen thought experiment, which had called quantum entanglement 'spooky action at a distance.'

Image source: Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox

Wu was named associate professor in 1952, making her the first woman to become a tenured physics professor in Columbia University history.

Wu quickly rose through the ranks to become a full professor in 1958, further establishing her leadership at Columbia University.

Image source: Columbia University

In December 1962, Wu experimentally demonstrated a universal form and more accurate version of Fermi's old beta decay model, confirming the CVC hypothesis of Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann on the road to the Standard Model.

Image source: Four-current

Wu's discovery confirming the conserved vector current hypothesis was formally presented at the Hilton hotel on January 26, 1963.

Wu co-authored a textbook with Steven Moszkowski entitled 'Beta Decay', the first comprehensive study on the subject. It quickly became the standard reference and remains so into the 21st century.

Image source: Beta decay

Wu was named the first Michael I. Pupin Professor of Physics at Columbia University in 1973, a distinguished named chair recognizing her achievements.

Image source: Mihajlo Pupin

Wu retired in 1981 and became a professor emerita at Columbia, concluding a remarkable career though remaining a respected figure in physics.

In March 1944, Wu joined the Manhattan Project's Substitute Alloy Materials (SAM) Laboratories at Columbia University, contributing to wartime atomic research.

Image source: Manhattan Project

In September 1944, Manhattan District Engineer Colonel Kenneth Nichols contacted Wu for her expertise, drawing on her knowledge of radioactive isotopes.

Image source: Kenneth Nichols

When Enrico Fermi faced problems with reactor xenon poisoning, Segrè remembered Wu's 1940 PhD thesis on radioactive isotopes of Xe and told Fermi to 'ask Ms. Wu,' helping solve a critical issue in plutonium production.

Image source: Enrico Fermi

Wary of giving information to other nations during the arms race, Wu waited several months before submitting a complete study with Segrè in November 1944, published months before the atomic bombs were used the next year.

Image source: Gaseous diffusion

Wu appeared on the magazine cover as the woman of the year in 1945 for her crucial role in the Manhattan Project, part of a list representing each woman of the year from 1920 to 2019.

Image source: Time (magazine)

Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1957 for their theoretical work that Wu's famous experiment verified. Wu herself received 23 nominations from 18 different physicists between 1958 and 1974 but never won; Jack Steinberger called the omission the biggest mistake of the Nobel committee.

Image source: Nobel Prize in Physics

Wu protested the imprisonment in Taiwan of the in-laws of physicist Kerson Huang in 1959 and of journalist Lei Chen in 1960, showing her commitment to human rights.

Image source: Lei Chen

Having distanced herself from the destructive outcome of the Manhattan Project, Wu recommended to Taiwanese president Chiang Kai-shek that Taiwan should never build nuclear weapons.

Image source: Chiang Kai-shek

In 1964, Wu spoke out against gender discrimination at a symposium at MIT, becoming a prominent voice for women in science.

Image source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Department chairman Serber discovered Wu had much lower pay than male colleagues, which she had never reported since she only cared about the research. He adjusted her salary to match her male counterparts.

Wu became the first female president of the American Physical Society and met with President Gerald Ford to request creation of an advisory scientific body. Ford granted this, signing into law the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Image source: American Physical Society

Wu's crucial role in the parity violation discovery was publicly honored when she was awarded the inaugural Wolf Prize in Physics in 1978, long overdue recognition for her contributions.

Image source: Wolf Prize in Physics

Wu continued advocating for human rights, protesting the crackdown in China that followed the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.

Image source: 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre

Wu received the Science for Peace prize from the Ettore Majorana Centre for Scientific Culture in Erice, Italy, honoring both her vast scientific activity in understanding weak forces and her promotion of women in science. She was also honored as honorary professor at a university in 1990.

Image source: Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture