When Yang Zhenning won the Nobel Prize in Physics, he once said that his father Yang Wuzhi had a lot to do with the award. However, what is puzzling is that when Yang Wuzhi, as a father, saw that his son won the highest honor award, he was very unhappy because of one thing, and he was unwilling to forgive Yang Zhenning, what happened?
To make this matter clear, we have to start with Yang Wuzhi's life experience.
Yang Wuzhi was born in 1896, a native of Fengyang, Anhui Province, at a time when the Qing Dynasty was decadent and incompetent.
Originally, Yang Wuzhi's father, Yang Bangsheng, was a private school teacher, but at that time, ordinary people like him not only had to bear heavy taxes, but also their lives were not peaceful, and the family's livelihood was getting worse.
In desperation, Yang Bangsheng, under the recommendation of an acquaintance, went to Tianjin to be Duan Qirui's staff. But then Duan Qirui lost ground again, so Yang Bangsheng decided to try his luck in Shenyang, but he contracted the plague on the road and died.
After Yang Bangsheng died, the livelihood of the family fell to his wife Wang. As a result, Wang, who became ill from hard work, also died when Yang Wuzhi was 9 years old.
As a result, Yang Wuzhi, whose parents died, could only live with his uncle.
Qing ** corruption, incompetence and social turmoil were unstable, so that Yang Wuzhi, who had suffered a family change, had the will to save the country and the people when he was young.
Fortunately, his uncle was financially acceptable, and he was smart and studious, so he was sent to the school, and with excellent results, he was admitted to Anhui Provincial No. 2 Middle School and Beijing Normal School to study mathematics and science.
In 1918, at this time, the Qing Dynasty had withdrawn from the stage of history, and the people who admired the new school built many schools in various places. A young talent like Yang Wuzhi with a high degree of education has become a high-quality teacher that the school is vying for.
Yang Wuzhi returned to his alma mater with deep feelings for Anhui Provincial No. 2 Middle School, but he didn't expect that the school would soon give him a social lesson.
It turned out that Yang Wuzhi found that the discipline of the gentlemen in the school was lax and they often had fun outside. In order to punish them, he followed the rule of "close the school gate at 10 o'clock at night" and shut out the students who returned late.
As a result, the students who returned late were very dissatisfied with Yang Wuzhi and took a provocation to beat him.
After receiving this humiliation, Yang Wuzhi reported the incident to the school leaders and demanded that the students be severely punished.
As a result, the school leaders not only ignored it, but also did not comfort Yang Wuzhi.
Later, Yang Wuzhi learned that those students were all children of local **. The school leaders, fearful of offending their father, were protective of them.
After knowing the truth, Yang Wuzhi resigned angrily. After that, Yang Wuzhi went to other schools to teach, but he found that those schools also had dark and corrupt conditions to varying degrees.
Yang Wuzhi was greatly frustrated by this, believing that in such an environment, it would be difficult for teaching and educating people to realize the ambition of saving the country and the people. Therefore, after several thoughts, he realized that "science saves the country" is the last word.
In 1923, Yang Wuzhi passed the Anhui government-funded study abroad examination, and after bidding farewell to his wife and children, he came to Stanford University in the United States to study mathematics. After receiving his bachelor's degree, he transferred to the University of Chicago to continue his studies. After several years of research and study in mathematics, he obtained a doctorate in mathematics, becoming the first doctor of mathematics in China.
In 1928, Yang Wuzhi returned to China after completing his studies, and he first taught at Xiamen University. A year later, he was hired as a professor of mathematics at Tsinghua University. During the Anti-Japanese War, he came to the rear of Yunnan with Tsinghua University and continued to teach at Southwest University.
Yang Wuzhi, who experienced the last years of the Qing Dynasty, the Anti-Japanese War and the War of Liberation, burst into tears with excitement when he ushered in the liberation of the country. On the eve of the liberation of the country, he deliberately brought his wife and children who were still stranded in Yunnan back to Shanghai to feel the joy of the founding of New China.
Of course, after Yang Wuzhi returned from studying abroad, he taught what he had learned to his students without reservation. When the People's Republic of China was founded, he was pleased to see that some of the students he taught were in full swing in the construction of the country.
In fact, Yang Wuzhi not only cultivated outstanding students such as Hua Luogeng and Chen Shiingshen, but also worked the cultivation of his son Yang Zhenning.
When Yang Zhenning was born, Yang Wuzhi was teaching in Huaining Province, Anhui Province. When Yang Zhenning was less than 1 year old, Yang Wuzhi was admitted to the Anhui government-funded international student and studied abroad for 6 years. Therefore, when Yang Zhenning was young, he could only rely on his mother Luo Menghua for his life.
Although Luo Menghua is an old-fashioned woman, she has studied in a private school, can read and write, and likes to read. Therefore, when Yang Zhenning was 4 years old, she took on the responsibility of teaching Yang Zhenning to read. Over the course of a year, Yang Zhenning had learned more than 3,000 words and could roughly read the newspaper to her.
As Yang Zhenning's literacy increased, his desire to explore the world became stronger and stronger, so Luo Menghua invited an old gentleman to teach him Mandarin.
When Yang Wuzhi returned from school, Yang Zhenning was already a 6-year-old child.
After Yang Wuzhi settled down at Xiamen University, Luo Menghua took Yang Zhenhua to Xiamen to reunite with Yang Wuzhi. Since then, Yang Zhenning has been sent to study in the school.
In 1929, Yang Wuzhi was employed by Tsinghua University, and Yang Zhenning and Luo Menghua moved to Beiping with their husbands.
Yang Wu Yiyi always believes that if you want to become a talent, you must first learn literature and then learn science. In other words, let's talk about morality before we talk about anything else. Therefore, Yang Wuzhi attaches great importance to Yang Zhenning's Chinese culture education, and whenever he has time, he recites ancient texts such as "Analects" with Yang Zhenning.
After Yang Zhenning was in junior high school, his talent in mathematics was even more revealed, but every time Yang Zhenning asked Yang Wuzhi for math problems, Yang Wuzhi always told him, don't rush, take your time. And also invited a professor of Chinese to give Yang Zhenning a lecture on "Mencius". At the request of his father, Yang Zhenning memorized while studying, and two years later, he actually memorized a book of tens of thousands of words of "Mencius" in its entirety.
After the fall of Beijing, Tsinghua University, Nankai University and other schools established temporary universities in Changsha, and later moved to Kunming with the approval of the people, and renamed it National Southwest Associated University.
In order not to be a slave to the country, Yang Wuzhi and his wife and children also moved with the school several times, and it took more than a year to finally settle down in Kunming.
Despite the displacement, Yang Wuzhi did not let Yang Zhenning's studies go. After living in Kunming, Yang Zhenning entered Kunhua Middle School to study in the second year of high school. In the same year, due to the regulations of the Ministry of Education, anyone with the same learning ability can register for the college entrance examination, so Yang Zhenning participated in the first college entrance examination of Southwest Associated University, and stood out among more than 20,000 people and was admitted to Southwest Associated University.
Originally, Yang Zhenning had a strong interest in mathematics and wanted to inherit his father's business and apply for the mathematics major, but Yang Wucheng believed that it was more practical to revitalize China or chemistry and physics. So he didn't approve of Yang Zhenning studying mathematics, and in the end, after a compromise between the two, Yang Zhenning transferred to the physics department.
Since then, Yang Wuzhi began to recommend some mathematics books to Yang Zhenning to him, and Yang Zhenning was greatly inspired.
After completing his graduate studies at Southwest Associated University, Yang Zhenning also successfully passed the examination for studying abroad at the official expense, and left for the University of Chicago in the United States in 1945 to study, where he obtained a doctorate.
After 1957, when Yang Zhenning wrote to Yang Wuzhi that he had won the Nobel Prize in Physics, Yang Wuzhi was overjoyed, and despite his ill health, he went to Geneva to visit Yang Zhenning, his daughter-in-law and grandson.
After Yang Wuzhi met Yang Zhenning, he described to him in detail the beautiful scene of New China. At the same time, he also told him that the country is in a period of construction and urgently needs a large number of scientific and technological talents, and hoped that he can return to China as soon as possible after completing his studies and contribute to the construction of the country.
However, Yang Zhenning also wants to continue to stay in the United States to conduct scientific research. So he didn't follow Yang Wuzhi's advice.
In 1960, with the successful launch of China's first missile, 64-year-old Yang Wuzhi couldn't hold back his excitement and once again thought of his son, who was still conducting scientific research in a foreign country.
In the past few years, Yang Wuzhi told Yang Zhenning all kinds of information about the rapid changes in the country and the importance that the country attaches to scientific talents by writing letters, hoping that Yang Zhenning can devote himself to the development of national science as soon as possible, like other scientists.
In order to convince Yang Zhenning, Yang Wuzhi crossed the ocean again despite his old age.
But Yang Wuzhi's trip still failed to make Yang Zhenning make up his mind to return to China.
In 1964, Yang Zhenning became an American citizen and became a U.S. citizen without consulting Yang Wuzhi. After the news came, Yang Wuzhi was very dissatisfied. However, he dragged his sick body to Geneva again. It's just that after he met Yang Zhenning this time, he never talked to him about the changes in the country again.
Since then, Yang Wuzhi rarely wrote to Yang Zhenning again, and until his death, he did not talk to Yang Zhenning about returning to China.
Many years later, Yang Zhenning mentioned his father Yang Wuzhi in his anthology. He wrote: "I know that my father has never been able to forgive me since I became an American citizen. ”
Of course, until now, there are still people on the Internet who are worried about Yang Zhenning's practice of becoming an American citizen.
In fact, judging from the situation at that time, he still had some hardships in becoming an American citizen.
The first is Yang Zhenning's mother-in-law, when his mother-in-law Cao Xiuqing lived in Taiwan with her children. After Yang Zhenning won the Nobel Prize in Physics, Jiang Zhongzheng detained Cao Xiuqing in order to win over Yang Zhenning.
Cao Xiuqing successfully arrived in the United States on the pretext of "persuading Yang Zhenning to go to Taiwan" after gaining Jiang Zhongzheng's trust, and met Yang Zhenning and his daughter Du Zhili.
Later, with the help of Yang Zhenning, Cao Xiuqing got in touch with her husband Du Yuming, who stayed in China. In the end, under the arrangement of the country's leaders, she was reunited with her husband.
Although his mother-in-law has escaped Jiang Zhongzheng's control, Du Zhili's younger brother and sister are still in Taiwan. Yang Zhenning knew that if he returned to China at this moment, with Jiang Zhongzheng's viciousness, it was very likely that he would poison them. So in order not to be controlled by Jiang Zhongzheng, he simply became an American citizen.
Of course, there is another advantage of becoming a U.S. citizen, that is, in scientific research, you can get better research conditions and unreserved knowledge sharing.
Despite becoming an American citizen, Yang Zhenning has made a lot of contributions to the country.
For example, in order to fight for China's legal status in the world, he founded the Chinese American Association. In 1971, China and the United States began to tentatively establish diplomatic relations, and he immediately visited China as an internationally renowned scholar. At the end of the visit, he gave speeches in many cities in the United States to show China's development.
In doing so, he not only gave Westerners a more detailed understanding of China, but also some overseas Chinese were also influenced by him and returned to China one after another to make suggestions and suggestions for the country's science and education.
In addition, in order to safeguard national rights and interests, he also collected evidence that the Diaoyu Islands belong to China on the issue of Diaoyu Dao, and answered relevant questions one by one at the press conference. Because of his high prestige, he has made a lot of influence internationally.
Yang Zhenning is also committed to cultivating scientific talents. According to incomplete statistics, he has trained as many as 10 academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In 2003, Yang Zhenning, who was already in his prime, finally returned to China after living abroad for more than 50 years. Because he was still in good health, he continued to shine for the progress of the country's physics.
In 2017, Yang Zhenning regained his Chinese nationality and became a Chinese citizen.
Although Yang Wuzhi has been dead for 44 years at this time, Yang Zhenning can come back and rejoin the Chinese nationality, presumably he can still be relieved of his son's late return.
References: "The Biography of Yang Zhenning", etc.).