Phenomenal Physicist: A Portrait of Chien-Shiung Wu

After graduation, Wu and her husband, the physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan, moved to the East Coast for work. Increasing anti-Asian racism, especially strong on the West Coast after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was likely an important factor in their relocation.

In 1944, Wu took a position with the Division of War Research at Columbia University to conduct highly classified research on the enrichment of uranium-235 and radiation detectors for the Manhattan Project. 

In 1956, Wu collaborated with the theoretical physicists Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang to help disprove the law of  “conservation of parity,” which had been a foundational principle of quantum mechanics for decades. Wu proposed an experiment using cobalt-60 to test—and ultimately demonstrate—Lee and Yang’s hypothesis that parity is not conserved in weak nuclear reactions.

Her male colleagues received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for this discovery, while Wu’s essential contribution did not receive the recognition many felt it deserved. It has been posited that Wu was not included in the prize because of gender bias.

Although she never received a Nobel Prize, Wu was the recipient of numerous other prestigious awards and honors throughout her career, including the National Academy of Sciences’ Comstock Prize in Physics (1963), the National Science Foundation’s Medal of Science (1975), and the Wolf Prize in Physics (1978). 

Wu was also the first woman to receive an honorary doctorate from Princeton University (1958) and the first woman to become president of the American Physical Society (1975). She was posthumously inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame (1998).

In 2021, the United States Postal Service issued a Forever stamp honoring Wu. To view the stamp, click here. Designed by art director Ethel Kessler, it features a bust-length portrait of the scientist by the artist Kam Mak. 

In 1964, in response to claims that women could not be as successful or as “objective” as men in the fields of science and engineering, Wu quipped, “I wonder whether the tiny atoms and nuclei or the mathematical symbols or the DNA molecules have any preference for either masculine or feminine treatment.”