She is the "Marie Curie of the East" and the "Mother of the Atomic Bomb", Wu Chien-shiung, one of the most powerful women on the surface. She has achieved outstanding achievements in the scientific community and is known as the world's most outstanding female physicist.
Her contributions have received global recognition, and in 1958 she was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1975 she was awarded the National Medal of Science, the highest scientific honor in the United States.
However, her heart has always belonged to China, and her ashes have returned to her hometown of Liuhe Town before her death, and are buried in her beloved land. On her tombstone, the small print reads: "Here is buried, the world's most outstanding female physicist, an eternal Chinese." ”
She, Wu Chien-shiung, with her wisdom and courage, has shown us the power of science and won the respect of the world for Chinese.
As the starting point of Zheng He's voyage to the West, Liuhe is also the birthplace of Wu Chien-shiung. When Wu Chien-shiung was born, she happened to be ranked in the "Jian" generation, so her father named her and her siblings "Heroes and Heroes".
However, Wu Chien-shiung's grandfather was an old talent who had many concerns about the name, and repeatedly proposed to her father, Wu Zhongyi, to change his name. However, Wu's father insisted, "Isn't it a good thing for women to have some masculine masculinity in China today?" ”
Perhaps, it was his father's expectation in the name that made Wu Chien-shiung different from other girls from then on.
Wu Chien-shiung grew up in a turbulent era, and her father, Wu Zhongyi, was an advanced element after the Xinhai Revolution and had been committed to the revolutionary cause. However, after the success of the revolution, Liuhe became a three-way zone, and bandits took the opportunity to breed and the people were struggling to make a living.
Wu Zhongyi stepped forward, formed a joint defense team, killed the bandit leader, and kept the peace of Liuhe. He even broke the bad habits of feudal society and opened the town's first girls' school, which was an unprecedented move.
At that time, it was widely believed that women only needed to marry and have children, but Wu Zhongyi insisted on educating girls with an open mind. He did ideological work one by one, encouraged children to study in school, and named the school Chengde Girls' School, with "virtue" as the school motto, so that women also have the opportunity to receive education and development.
Wu Zhongyi's behavior not only allowed his daughter Wu Chien-shiung to receive a good education, but also contributed to social progress.
Her father's words and deeds deeply influenced Wu Chien-shiung, making her exude a unique chivalrous temperament when she was growing up. Although she is not as well-known as Lu Xiaoman and Lin Huiyin among the top ten talented women, her inner ambition is not inferior to anyone.
Under the influence of her father, she excelled in her writing skills and views on historical issues, but when the country was in crisis, she took science to save the country as the goal of her professional study, and formed an indissoluble bond with physics.
During his time at university, Wu Chien-shiung helped Gu Jingwei with her research, and Gu gradually discovered that this young girl who came with her was not only enterprising, but also had great potential in physics.
After the experiment, Gu Jingwei held Wu Chien-shiung's hand tightly and said sincerely: "You are invited by me in every possible way, to tell you the truth, I don't want you to leave, but I also don't want your future to be affected."
The Chinese were experimenting in the foreign concessions, and the Japanese were eyeing Chinese territory. Now the situation in China can never be predicted, what may happen in the future.
If you want, I still have good teachers and classmates at the University of Michigan in the United States, and I can help you recommend studying abroad. "Gu Jingwei's words deeply shocked Wu Jianxiong.
She studied physics in the first place so that she could one day save the country. But now she is very sad to see the country fall day by day, and she is helpless.
However, the need to go abroad made her hesitate. She doesn't want to leave her homeland, but what can she do if one day the motherland settles down and needs talents?
After much deliberation, Wu Chien-shiung told her father about her idea, and with the help of her uncle Wu Zhuozhi, she flew to the United States at her own expense to begin her education.
During her studies in the United States, Chien-shiung Wu kept her mission in mind, knowing that she was a messenger of Chinese culture, so she insisted on wearing a cheongsam full of oriental charm whenever and wherever she wanted, and even had difficulty adapting to American food.
After completing her Ph.D., although she longed to return to her home country, she was faced with a dilemma of whether she should stay in the United States or return to her homeland because China was in the midst of a long war at the time, and her "nuclear fission chain reaction" research had attracted the attention of the American authorities and her supervisors.
However, remembering his purpose for coming to the United States, Wu Chien-shiung firmly chose to return to China. However, the Kuomintang embassy in the United States obstructed her plan to return to China in every possible way, and even reprimanded and intimidated her, so that her plan to return to China was forced to be suspended.
Wu Chien-shiung and Yuan Jialiu's wedding date is set for a short time, and they plan to join forces again to return to their homeland. However, at that time, the Japanese frenzy had already caused the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the United States, and the flames of war burned in the Pacific Ocean, and all the ways back to China were burned by the Japanese invaders.
It was at this time that the United States proposed the "Manhattan Plan" in the hope of hastening the defeat of fascism. Wu Chien-shiung, who is in the United States, wants to contribute his strength to the motherland.
So, she accepted the invitation of the United States and became the only Chinese who did not have American citizenship to participate in the world's first atomic bomb research program. As the critical moment of the experiment approached, these scientists were more careful in their experiments, knowing that any problem at any point could cause the development of the atomic bomb to fail.
But what they feared happened. Oppenhammer, who was in charge of the research, found that there was a problem with the atomic bomb's nuclear chain reaction, which is one of the core elements of the atomic bomb**, and if this problem is not solved, even if the atomic bomb is made, it will lose its lethality.
In the laboratory, people feel anxious when they look at the atomic bomb that cannot operate continuously. You must know that the atomic bomb is an unprecedented technology, and studying it is like crossing a river by feeling the stones, and there is no precedent to follow.
And the problems they face are even more difficult problems within problems. However, this problem was already encountered by Wu when he was at the University of California, Berkeley. As a result, with the help of Wu Chien-shiung, everyone understood that the reason why the nuclear chain reaction could not be carried out continuously was because there were too many neutrons in the nuclear process and stopped.
In a desert in New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, with a loud bang, a mushroom cloud rose, and Wu Chien-shiung was at a critical moment when the world's first atomic bomb was successfully launched.
This not only ended the war of aggression of the Japanese fascists, but also announced a major breakthrough in the field of science. However, Wu's contribution goes far beyond that. Without Wu's help, Yang and Lee could have faced even greater difficulties on their way to winning the Nobel Prize.
In 1956, at the International Physics Conference, they proposed the bold idea that the law of conservation of universal symmetry might not exist, and shared the results of their experiments.
As soon as this hypothesis was proposed, it immediately attracted wide attention and heated discussion in the scientific community. Most scientists agreed, and although this hypothesis was theoretically possible without any experimental verification, it was extremely difficult to carry out such verification experiments at the time.
As a result, Yang Chenning and Lee Tsung-dao pinned their hopes on Wu Chien-shiung, who had profound attainments in decay research. Upon hearing this request, Wu Chien-shiung did not immediately agree, because it was very difficult to successfully carry out this experiment according to the level of science and technology at that time.
After several days of deliberation, Wu finally decided to take on the challenge. However, this experiment required not only solving theoretical and technical problems, but also overcoming the limitations of experimental equipment.
In order to obtain the only device in the United States that could carry out this experiment, Wu ran into a wall and it took months before finally obtaining permission.
Wu Chien-shiung devoted herself to the experiment for the next few months, and although her daily teaching salary was her main income, she had to compress her sleep and travel day and night in order to pursue the truth.
After months of hard work, in January 1957, Wu Chien-shiung and her team successfully verified the correctness of the law of non-conservation of cosmic symmetry proposed by Yang Chen-Ning and Lee Tsung-dao.
This breakthrough had a profound impact on the development of physics in the 20th century, and it hit the physics community like a flood, and major magazines rushed to report on the female scientist who proved the existence of this great law.
At the National Congress of Physics, the chairman of the conference excitedly announced: "This is an epoch-making experiment, an achievement that surpasses nuclear physics, and even surpasses physics itself, and is a milestone ...... in the history of human understanding."”
Wu Chien-shiung was supposed to win the Nobel Prize with Yang Chen-ning and Lee Tsung-dao, but he was unable to win the prize that year due to gender discrimination. She didn't care about this, and was more concerned about when she would be able to return to her home country.
In 1971, Yang became the first Chinese scientist to return to his homeland, which gave Wu Chien-shiung hope. In the past, due to Sino-US relations and other reasons, it was difficult for her to return home, but now she finally sees the light of return.
In 1973, with the easing of relations between China and the United States, Wu Chien-shiung and her husband immediately embarked on a journey back to their homeland. However, this trip back to China was full of regrets, because her father, brother and mother had passed away due to historical reasons, and now they did not even have the opportunity to worship.
This deep grief made her heart fluctuate. In order to let the children remember their Chinese roots, the couple took the children on a tour of the Great Wall of China and the Yellow River. This trip made her think a lot, and when she told the story of Zhan Tianyou to her children, a thought flashed through her heart: her contribution to the motherland was insignificant in the past, and now that the country has gone through a turbulent period, why can't she make more contributions to the motherland from now on?
Chien-shiung Wu, known as the "Empress of Nuclear Physics", has devoted her life to scientific research, especially in the field of nuclear physics, and her contributions are recognized worldwide. Together with her husband Yuan Jialiu, she traveled back and forth between China and the United States, contributing her savings to the education of the motherland until the last moment of her life.
Her life was full of tenacity and perseverance, as Jiang Caijian said in his epitaph: "Her willpower and dedication to her work are reminiscent of Marie Curie; Her accession, grace and intelligence reflect sincere love and perseverance and wisdom; She is an outstanding global citizen and an eternal Chinese. ”
Her scientific work has demonstrated thoughtful work and insight, and has made a great contribution to the scientific progress of mankind. However, despite Wu's scientific achievements, she did not win the Nobel Prize.
This cannot but be said to be a pity, because her contribution should be recognized and respected by the whole world. Wu's story tells us that no matter where we come from, no matter what our gender is, as long as we have a love and persistent pursuit of science, we can create our own glory.
Today, Chien-shiung Wu's spirit still inspires us, and her story continues to inspire us. We should remember her, for her scientific achievements, for her tenacity and perseverance, for her love and dedication.
She is our pride, she is our role model.