Investigative News Reporter | Zhao Meng
Investigative News Editor | Liu Haichuan
On October 18, 2025, the theoretical physics mastermind, who was hailed as comparable to Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein, and the 1957 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Yang Zhenning, passed away in Beijing due to illness at the age of 103. His passing not only marked the end of a golden era in physics but also made the world lose a scientific bridge and a humanistic lighthouse spanning East and West.
Yang Zhenning was born in Hefei, Anhui, China, in 1922. His father, Yang Wuzhi, had earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Chicago and had served as the head of the Department of Mathematics at Tsinghua University and Southwest Associated University for many years. When Yang Zhenning was born, his father was teaching at a middle school in Huaining, so he named his first son "Zhenning".
As a child, Yang Zhenning displayed extraordinary talent. He could recognize more than 3,000 Chinese characters at the age of four and recite "The Mysterious Universe" (by James Jeans) at five. As a teenager, Yang Zhenning attended Xiamen Yanwu Primary School, Chongde Middle School, a Christian school in Beijing, and Kunming No. 1 High School. Yang Zhenning had a wide range of interests, especially when he read "The Mysterious Universe" during his middle school years, which greatly influenced him. He once told his father when he was in middle school, "I want to win the Nobel Prize when I grow up!"
When the Anti-Japanese War broke out, Yang Zhenning returned with his family to their hometown in Hefei, Anhui. In the summer of 1938, because of the students' complicated circumstances, the Ministry of Education of the National Government announced that all students could take the university entrance examination with equivalent qualifications without needing a diploma. Upon hearing this news, Yang Zhenning applied for the unified entrance examination of Southwest Associated University with the qualification of junior high school second year. A few days later, he was admitted with excellent results. When Yang Zhenning applied for Southwest Associated University, he was very interested in chemistry and had studied only chemistry in high school, not physics, so he initially enrolled in the chemistry department. Later, he realized he preferred physics and transferred to the physics department.
In 1942, Yang Zhenning graduated from Southwest Associated University and then obtained a graduate degree from its institute. The following year, he was selected for a government-sponsored study abroad program to the United States, where he studied at the University of Chicago and received his doctor's degree in 1948. In 1949, Yang Zhenning joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for postdoctoral research and began a long and fruitful collaboration with Li Zhengdao that lasted over a decade. At that time, the director of the institute, "father of the atomic bomb" Oppenheimer, said that his favorite scene was seeing Yang and Li walking on the grass in Princeton.
In 1956, Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao collaborated to deeply study the perplexing "θ-τ puzzle," which later became known as the two different decay modes of K mesons. Li and Yang recognized that parity might not be conserved in weak interactions. After carefully reviewing all previous experiments, they confirmed that these experiments had not proven the conservation of parity in weak interactions. Based on this, they further proposed several experimental approaches to test the non-conservation of parity in weak interactions.
The following year, this theory was verified by the experiment conducted by Wu Jianxiong's group. Therefore, Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao's work quickly gained recognition in the academic community and earned them the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics. This was the first time a Chinese person won a Nobel Prize. Later, Yang Zhenning often publicly stated that his greatest contribution in life was helping the Chinese people overcome the feeling of inferiority.
In terms of scientific research, he believed that his most important achievement was not the parity non-conservation that earned him the Nobel Prize, but his work on the gauge field theory. In 1954, Yang Zhenning and his student Mills proposed the Yang-Mills theory. The Yang-Mills theory was a revolutionary breakthrough in physics in the 20th century, centered around "non-Abelian gauge fields," and was the first to provide a unified mathematical framework for the fundamental interactions of nature (excluding gravity). It not only successfully explained the nature of electromagnetic forces but also became the cornerstone for the subsequent theories of weak and strong interactions, directly driving the establishment of the standard model of particle physics, allowing humans to systematically understand the behavior patterns of basic particles such as quarks and leptons.
Although the Yang-Mills theory did not directly bring Yang Zhenning and Mills the Nobel Prize, it has been like a scientific gold mine since the 1960s, continuously providing groundbreaking achievements in the field of particle physics. It has led to seven scientists winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, becoming one of the most "Nobel-prize-producing theoretical frameworks" in the history of modern physics. Its influence extends from theoretical construction to experimental verification, profoundly rewriting humanity's understanding of the microscopic world.
After 1966, Yang Zhenning taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook for a long time, founding and chairing the Institute for Theoretical Physics (renamed the Yang-Zhenning Institute for Theoretical Physics in 1999). He was also an academician of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan (elected in 1958), a member of the National Academy of Sciences (elected in 1965), a fellow of the Royal Society (elected in 1993), and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (elected in 2017, and an honorary academician in 1994). Moreover, he has long served as a Wenbo Chair Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 1977, Yang Zhenning and Liang Enzuo founded the "Chinese Association of America" in Boston, promoting Sino-American relations.
Yang Zhenning has done a lot to improve the level of physical research in China, returning to mainland China multiple times for lectures. In 1986, he promoted the establishment of the Theoretical Physics Research Laboratory within the Nankai Institute of Mathematics, established by Chen Xingshen. In 1997, he promoted the establishment of the Center for Advanced Studies at Tsinghua University in Beijing, attracting high-level young scholars to conduct frontier research. In his later years, Yang Zhenning always missed his homeland, and after settling in Tsinghua University in 2003, his desire to return home grew stronger. In April 2015, he officially gave up his U.S. citizenship and restored his Chinese nationality.
After settling in Tsinghua University, Yang Zhenning not only deeply participated in scientific research and promoted the development of physics in China, but also practiced the concept of "excellent teachers on campus" by personally lecturing to Tsinghua University students, leaving a deep impression, especially in the field of undergraduate basic education. Behind Yang Zhenning's determination to teach lies a profound reflection on Chinese higher education. He once frankly stated that returning to China to teach undergraduates was not only a "cultural observation" comparing the differences between Chinese and American education, but also hoped to correct the tendency of "emphasizing research over teaching" through action.
When talking about the secret to longevity, Yang Zhenning joked, "I have no special health preservation methods; it may be due to good genes and great luck." He believed that first, he had a relatively smooth life, and a calm mindset was very helpful for health; second, he also benefited from the progress of modern medicine. At the age of 75, he suffered a mild myocardial infarction, but the heart bypass surgery was successful. He once said, "I am prepared to live to be 100."
In recent years, Yang Zhenning has been working on organizing his various manuscripts. On May 14, 2021, Yang Zhenning donated more than 2,000 items, including books, manuscript articles, letters, audio-visual materials, and artworks (such as calligraphy and sculptures) from his office and archive room to Tsinghua University. The old library of Tsinghua University established the "Yang Zhenning Collection Room" for this purpose. On September 22 of the same year, officials from the Ministry of Education visited Yang Zhenning at Tsinghua University on behalf of General Secretary Xi Jinping of the Communist Party of China to celebrate his birthday, which coincided with his 100th birthday. That afternoon, Yang Zhenning delivered a speech at Tsinghua University titled "May people live long, and we share the same path across thousands of miles."
Physicist Li Miao, in an interview with Investigative News, stated that Yang Zhenning's status in the physics community belongs to the level of scientists like Heisenberg and Dirac. He once recalled in an article, "Professor Yang Zhenning is undoubtedly one of the greatest physicists still alive today. His physics research has made great contributions to human understanding of the universe." "When I was young, my first hero was Einstein, the second was Heisenberg, and then came Yang Zhenning."
In his personal work "Dawn Collection" in 2007, Yang Zhenning said, "The era of Lu Xun, Wang Guowei, and Chen Yinke was a long night in the history of the Chinese nation. My generation and the students of the Southwest Associated University grew up in this seemingly endless long night. Fortunately, the Chinese nation has finally completed this long night and seen the dawn. I am now 85 years old, and I will not see the day fully bright. However, Weng Fan (his wife) promised to see it for me."
After ten years, in 2017, in his co-authored work "Morning Light Collection" with Weng Fan, he said, "I did not expect that within the next ten years, both domestic and international situations would undergo astonishing changes. Although the sky is not yet fully bright, the dawn has turned into morning light, so this new book is named 'Morning Light Collection.' Moreover, it seems that if I am lucky, I might even see the day fully bright myself!"
Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7562425702813844002/
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