Tsung Dao Lee

Tsung-Dao Lee or known as T.D. Lee is a Chinese-American physicist and university

professor. He was born on November 24, 1926. In early life, Tsung-Dao Lee was born to Chun-
Kang Lee and Chang on November 24, 1926, in Shanghai. His father was a chemical industrialist
and merchant, involved in the early development of modern synthesized fertilizer in China. 

Tsung-Dao Lee had four brothers and a sister. In the 1950s, Tsung-Dao Lee, his brother
Robert C.T Lee and mothers moved to Taiwan where they were jailed during the White
Terror. Tsung-Dao Lee received his secondary education in Shanghai, Suzhou in a school
affiliated with the Soochow University and the Jiangxi Joint High School. However, his high
school education was interrupted during the Second Sino-Japanese war and did not receive his
secondary diploma. Tsung-Dao Lee enrolled at the National Che Kiang University now Zhejiang
University in 1943, where Tsung-Dao Lee initially joined the Department of Chemical
Engineering.

Tsung-Dao Lee later discovered his interest in physic. With his interest, professors like
Wang Kan-chang and Shu Xingbeimentored him and therefore moved to the Department of
Physics of the University. The Japanese invasion in 1944 also interrupted his education and
therefore left the University. In 1945, Lee enrolled at the National Southwestern Associated
University in Kunming where he studied under Professor Wu Ta-you.

Tsung-Dao Lee became known for his works on Lee Model, parity violation, relativistic
heavy ion (RHIC) physics, particle physics, soliton stars and nontopological solitons. Tsung-Dao
Lee jointly won the Nobel Prize in Physics with Franklin C N Yang in 1957 for their work on the
violation of the parity law in weak interactions. Chien-Shiung Wu had experimentally verified
this in 1956, with her Wu experiment. The Prize made Tsung-Dao Lee the youngest Nobel
laureate after the Second World War until 2014, when Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Peace
Prize. In 1953, he joined the Columbia University and remained there until 2012 reaching the
status of University Professor Emeritus.