Yang, Chen-ning

Yang, Chen-ning (chen-ning yäng) [key], 1922–, American physicist, b. China, Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago, 1948. Chen-ning Yang was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, N.J. from 1949 to 1955, and a professor of physics there from 1955 to 1965. In 1965 he was appointed Albert Einstein Professor of Physics of the State Univ. of New York at Stony Brook. He is known for his researches in statistical mechanics and particle physics. With American physicist T. D. Lee he shared the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for research refuting the law of parity, which stated that, at the subatomic level, nature does not distinguish between left-and right-handed configurations: if a nuclear reaction or decay occurs in nature, then so does its mirror image and with equal frequency.

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

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