Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997)

Dr. Wu came to the U.S. in 1936 after graduating with a B.S. from Nanking Central University. She received her doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley in 1940.

She worked with the Manhattan Project research team to develop the atomic bomb. Her most notable accomplishment was to disprove the “law of conservation of parity.” Two of her colleagues, Dr. Tsung-Dao Lee and Dr. Chen Ning Yang were instead awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1957 – a fact widely blamed on sexism by the Nobel election committee.

Her many accomplishments won the nicknames of “First Lady of Physics,” and “Madam Curie of China.” She also became the first living scientist to have an asteroid named after her.