Chen Ning Yang was born in China in 1922. He completed his Bachelor of Science degree at the National Southwest Associated University in Kunming, China in 1942 and his Master鈥檚 degree in 1944 from Tsinghua University, China. He went to the United States on a Tsinghua University Fellowship, and entered the University of Chicago in January 1946, where he received his PhD degree in 1948. His doctoral thesis was on angular distribution in nucleon reactions. The next year he was invited to do research at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and became a professor there in 1955.
Yang was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957 for discovering parity violation. In 1965, Yang moved to Stony Brook University, where he became the first director of the newly founded Institute for Theoretical Physics. Today the Institute is known as the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics. After retiring from Stony Brook University in 1999 he returned as an honorary director of Tsinghua University, China.
Yang delivered the Beatty Lecture on March 5, 1991, titled 鈥淪ymmetry and Physics鈥�.
Image: Stony Brook University Archives
Video: 麻豆AV Archives
