Yang Chen-Ning

Yang Chen-Ning
楊振寧
Yang in 1976
Born(1922-10-01)October 1, 1922
DiedOctober 18, 2025(2025-10-18) (aged 103)
Beijing, People's Republic of China
Citizenship
Education
Known for
Spouses
  • Tu Chih-Li (杜致禮)
    (m. 1950; died 2003)
  • Weng Fan (翁帆)
    (m. 2005)
Children3
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisOn the Angular Distribution in Nuclear Reactions and Coincidence Measurements
 (1948)
Doctoral advisorEdward Teller
Other academic advisorsEnrico Fermi
Doctoral students
Chinese name
Simplified Chinese杨振宁
Traditional Chinese楊振寧
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu PinyinYáng Zhènníng
Wade–GilesYang2 Chên4-ning2
IPA[jǎŋ ʈʂə̂n.nǐŋ]
Signature

Yang Chen-Ning (simplified Chinese: 杨振宁; traditional Chinese: 楊振寧; pinyin: Yáng Zhènníng; October 1, 1922 – October 18, 2025) also known as C.N. Yang and Franklin Yang, was a Chinese-American theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to statistical mechanics, integrable systems, gauge theory, particle physics and condensed matter physics.

Yang is known for his collaboration with Robert Mills in 1954 in developing non-abelian gauge theory, widely known as the Yang–Mills theory, which describes the nuclear forces in the Standard Model of particle physics.

Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on parity non-conservation of the weak interaction, which was confirmed by the Wu experiment in 1956. The two proposed that the conservation of parity, a physical law observed to hold in all other physical processes, is violated in weak nuclear reactions – those nuclear processes that result in the emission of beta or alpha particles.