Chen Ning Franklin Yang (楊振寧 pinyin: Yáng Zhčnníng) (born September 22, 1922) is a Chinese American physicist, who worked on statistical mechanics and symmetry principles. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 at the age of 35, with Tsung-Dao Lee, for his investigations into the parity laws, a piece of basic research in the physics of elementary particles.
Born in Hefei, Anhui, China Yang studied elementary school in Beijing, and middle school first in Beijing, then in Kunming.
He received his Bachelor of Science degree from National Southwest Associated University (西南聯合大學) in Kunming in 1942. Two years later, he studied for his Master of Science degree with a full scholarship in Tsinghua University, at the time also in Kunming. On a Tsinghua University Fellowship in January 1946, he first studied for Ph.D, then taught at the University of Chicago. He worked at the Institute for Advanced Study.
He has has been elected Fellow of the American Physical Society and the Academia Sinica, and was awarded an honorary doctorate of the Princeton University (1958).
Yang married Chih-li Tu (杜致禮 Dů Zhělǐ), a teacher, in 1950 and has two sons and a daughter: Franklin, jr., Gilbert, and Eulee (in order of age).
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