HN Reader

Underrated even among physicists. Among the immediate post war generation his contributions are up there with Feynman and Schwinger.

To quote Freeman Dyson: "Professor Yang is, after Einstein and Dirac, the preeminent stylist of the 20th century physics. From his early days as a student in China to his later years as the sage of Stony Brook, he has always been guided in his thinking by a love of exact analysis and formal mathematical beauty. This love led him to his most profound and original contribution to physics, the discovery with Robert Mills of non-Abelian gauge fields. With the passage of time, his discovery of non-Abelian gauge fields is gradually emerging as a greater and more important event than the spectacular discovery of parity non-conservation which earned him the Nobel Prize."

In addition to the Yang Mills theory, parity nonconservation, phase transition theory, and the Yang Baxter equation, these are also among Yang Zhenning’s important theoretical achievements. Moreover, he has made numerous academic contributions in areas such as the integral formulation of gauge fields and cold atom research.

I am a former physics student of C. N. Yang’s at Stony Brook University.

Rest In Peace.

Sad news. Perhaps the last connection to OG physics. I was fortunate to meet Dr Yang a few times. Surreal to hear him describe working for Fermi and Oppenheimer and his reaction on hearing about the Hiroshima detonation.

Some of his work: http://home.ustc.edu.cn/~lxsphys/2021-3-18/The%20conceptual%...

And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang%E2%80%93Mills_theory

There’s a fascinating story about S Chandrasekhar (of Chandrasekhar limit fame) driving 100 miles to teach him every week. Teaching two students, the professor got a Nobel prize and the two students got a Nobel prize.

“ One story in particular illustrates Chandrasekhar's devotion to his science and his students. In the 1940s, while he was based at the University's Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wis., he drove more than 100 miles round-trip each week to teach a class of just two registered students. Any concern about the cost-effectiveness of such a commitment was erased in 1957, when the entire class -- T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang -- won the Nobel Prize in physics.”

Source: https://chronicle.uchicago.edu/951012/chandra.shtml

I came to know of this guy though Jim Simons.

He once "leaked" the idea that Jim Simon's trading success came from his use of ideas called "gauge theory" and "fibre bundles".

I forgot the exact timestamp, but you will have to watch the entire interview to find that segment — https://youtu.be/zVWlapujbfo

One of the Feynman lectures in physics is about Yang, Lee, and Wu's discovery. I thought it was a great listen:

https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/flptapes.html

#52 Symmetry in physical laws

I was fortunate enough to take his Quantum Mechanics class when I was a student at SUNY, Stony Brook. He used to a drive a simple white Honda Accord that was 7+ years old.

A miscellaneous structure for film negatives. Documenting his life in series of a relative and a photographic series.

> Ning attended the prestegious Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.

Yang-Mills theory for electro-magnetic force is grounded in integratable systems, a gauge theory in statistics, etc for elementary particles.

Of Yang-Mills fame among many other things:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yang_Chen-Ning

RIP

I'd love to one day learn enough math and physics to really understand gauge theory beyond just the many pop-sci videos I've watched about it.

A life well lived.

China only have 8 Nobel winners compared to the 425 from the US is crazy.

RIP.