Father and I
Yang Zhenning
Chinese Academy of Sciences Academician and Nobel Prize winner in Physics
One day he wrote two sentences to me: Don’t forget every meal, my dear, I will be grateful for my country’s grace. Today's young people may think that these two sentences have a bit of feudal flavor, but I think that although many of the ideas in the feudal era are undesirable, many of them have permanent value.
——Yang Zhenning
The closest moments for father and son to get along
When I was born in Hefei, Anhui in 22, my father was a teacher at a middle school in Anqing . Anqing was also called Huaining at that time. My father named me "Zhenning", and the character "Zhen" is the generation name of the Yang family, and the character "Ning" means Huaining. When I was less than one year old, my father passed the Anhui University of the United States and public-funded student .
In the summer of 1928, my father received his doctorate from from the University of Chicago and returned to China by boat and became a professor of mathematics at Xiamen University.
xiamen I remember that year of life was very happy, and it was also the year when I learned a lot from my father. My father used big balls and small balls to explain the movement of the sun, the earth and the moon; he taught me the English letter "abcde..."; of course, he also taught me some arithmetic problems such as chicken and rabbit in the same cage as . However, he did not ignore Chinese cultural knowledge, and also taught me to read many Tang poems, which may be thirty or forty; taught me the order of Chinese historical dynasties: "Tang, Yu, Xia, Shang and Zhou...", stems and branches order: "A, Yi, B, D...", " Rat, Chou, Yin and Tiger...", etc.
When my father was young, he liked to sing Peking opera . That year in Xiamen, he sometimes sang "I'm like a bird in a cage, and it's hard to spread with wings..." However, he did not teach me to sing Peking opera, but only taught me to sing songs from the early years of the Republic of China, such as "Thousands of years, one lineage...", "Chinese men, Chinese men...", etc.
My father played Go very well. That year he taught me how to play Go. I remember that at the beginning he asked me to retreat to nine sons after many years, but I never got the "true teaching" from my father. Until 1962, when we reunited in , Geneva, , he still wanted to let me have seven sons.
After teaching at Xiazhai University for a year, my father changed to a professor at Tsinghua University in Peking. In the autumn of 1929, our family of three moved to No. 19, the West Courtyard of Tsinghua Park, which was a courtyard house on the northeast corner of the west courtyard.
Behind the photo of 13-year-old Yang Zhenning in front of his home in Tsinghua Park, his father Yang Wuzhi wrote "Zhenning seems to have a strange appearance, I want to be a word like Bogui."
We lived in Tsinghua Park for a total of eight years, from 1929 to the year when the War of Resistance against War began. The eight years at Tsinghua University are very beautiful and happy in my memories. At that time, Chinese society was very turbulent, with internal and external troubles, and many difficulties. But we live in the walls of Tsinghua Park and have no contact with the outside world. I spent my childhood in such a protected environment. In my memory, Tsinghua University is very beautiful. My elementary school classmates and I were traveling around the park. We have climbed almost every tree and studied every grass.
My father often traveled eastward with me, along the small road to Guyue Hall or to the Science Museum. This small road is particularly quiet. After passing through the bushes, there is a large section of road on the left of farmland and lotus ponds, and a small earth mountain on the right. I rarely meet pedestrians on the road. Although the scenery in spring, summer, autumn and winter is different, the quiet atmosphere is the same. As a child, I couldn’t realize that the moment my father walked with me on the trail was the closest moment we were alone.
Persistent on studying in hard days
When I was nine or ten years old, my father already knew that I had a strong ability to learn mathematics. When I entered junior high school at the age of eleven, my ability in this area was more fully demonstrated. Looking back, if he taught me analyzing geometry and calculus at that time, I would have learned very quickly and would have made him very happy.But he didn't do this: During the summer vacation between the first and second grades of junior high school, my father asked Professor Lei Haizong to introduce a history student to teach me " Mencius ". Mr. Lei introduced his proud student Ding Zeliang . Mr. Ding is knowledgeable. He not only taught me "Mencius", but also taught me a lot of ancient history knowledge, which I had never learned in school textbooks. The next summer vacation, he taught me his other half of "Mencius", so I could recite the full text of "Mencius" in middle school.
There are many math books in English and German on my father's bookshelf, and I often read them. Because I didn't have enough foreign language foundation at that time, I couldn't understand the details. I have asked my father many times, and he always said, "Take it slow, don't worry", and only occasionally explains one or two basic concepts to me.
1937 began the War of Resistance Against Japan. Our family first moved back to our hometown in Hefei. Later, after the Japanese army entered Nanjing, we arrived in Kunming in March 1938 through Hankou, Hong Kong, Haipong, and Hanoi. I studied in Kunhua Middle School in Kunming for half a year in my second year of high school, but I did not go to the third year of high school. In the autumn of 1938, I was admitted to the Southwest United University with the qualification of " equal academic ability ".
1938 to 1939, my father introduced me to the spirit of modern mathematics, but he did not agree with me pursuing mathematics. He believes that mathematics is not practical enough. In 1938, I liked chemistry very much when I applied for the university entrance exam, so I applied to the Department of Chemistry. Later, in order to prepare for the entrance exam, I studied physics in my third year of high school and found that physics was more suitable for my taste, so I entered the Department of Physics of Southwest Associated University.
Eight years of the War of Resistance Against Japan were hard and difficult days, and it was also the fastest time for me to learn new knowledge in my life.
I still remember the details of my departure from home and about to fly to India to the United States on August 28, 1945: Early in the morning, my father accompanied me alone from the northwest corner of Kunming to Tuodong Road in the southeast suburbs and waiting for the bus to Wujiaba Airport. When she left home, all four younger siblings were reluctant to leave, but her mother was very calm and remembered that she did not shed tears. When my father came to Tuodong Road, he said some encouragement words, and both of them were very calm. After saying goodbye, I got into a very crowded bus. At first I could see my father waved to me through the window. A few minutes later, he was squeezed into the distance by the crowded crowd. There were many classmates who went to the United States in the car. When I talked, my attention was shifted to issues such as flight routes and climate change. After waiting for more than an hour, the car never started. Suddenly an American next to me made a gesture to me and asked me to look out the window: I suddenly found that my father was still waiting there! His thin figure, wearing a robe, and his hair on his forehead was gray. Seeing his anxious look, I endured the morning tears burst out for a moment and couldn't help myself.
"Life to Respond to the National Enhancement Hong"
At the beginning of 1946, I registered as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. I chose the University of Chicago not because it is my father's alma mater, but because I have admired for a long time and went to the University of Chicago. At that time, the Departments of Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics of the University of Chicago were all first-class. I was in school for three and a half years, and I was a graduate student for the first two and a half years. After obtaining my doctorate, I stayed at the school as a faculty member for one year. In the summer of 1949, I transferred to the Princeton Institute of Advanced Academic Studies. My father was very happy about my excellent grades in Zhida University. What I was even happier was that I would go to the famous Princeton Advanced Academic Institute, but what he cared about the most at that time was not these, but my marriage issue. In the autumn of 1949, Mr. Wu Dayou told me that Mr. Hu Shi asked me to see him. Mr. Hu, I met him once or twice in , Peking when I was a child. I don’t know why he thinks of me in New York after so many years. When he met Mr. Hu, he was very polite and said something to praise my studies. Then he said that he had seen my father before going abroad, and his father asked him to take care of me for finding a girlfriend. Today I still remember Mr. Hu saying in a very funny way: "Your generation is much more capable than us, so how can I help me!"
August 26, 1950 Du Zhili and I got married in Princeton. In the 1950s, Mr. Hu often came to Princeton University's Guest Library and visited my house many times.When he came for the first time, he said, "It's true that you found such a beautiful and capable wife yourself."
My father was particularly interested in my first article after coming to the United States in 1947 and my doctoral thesis the following year, because they are closely related to group theory . After Wu Jianxiong's experiment in in January 1957 confirmed the theory of parity non-conservation, I called Shanghai to my father and told him the news. The non-conservation of parity is related to symmetry, and therefore also to group theory, so my father is of course very excited. He was in extremely poor health at that time, and getting this news greatly comforted him.
Wishes in the depths of the soul
My father came to Geneva three times, especially the last two times, with a sense of mission and felt that he should persuade me to return to China. This is of course an open or secret suggestion from the United Front Work Department, but on the one hand it is also a wish deep in the father's own soul.
and my father and mother met three times in Geneva, which had a great impact on me. In those years, the actual situation of China was rarely known about in the United States. The three meetings made me realize my father and mother’s view on the New China. I remember we lived in Routede Florissant in 1962. One night, my father said that the new China made the Chinese really stand up: I didn’t make a needle before, but today I could make cars and planes (at that time, I hadn’t made atomic bomb , and my father didn’t know that China was already developing atomic bomb). In the past, there were often floods and droughts, and millions of people died at any time, but today there are no one at all. In the past, illiterate people were everywhere, but today at least all children in the city can go to school. Once upon a time..., today... Just as he was speaking happily, the mother interrupted him and said, "Don't just talk about these things. I went to buy tofu in the dark. I stood in the stand for three hours and could only buy two untidy pieces. What's the point?" The father was very angry and said that she specifically pulled his hind legs, giving his son a wrong impression. He walked into the bedroom with anger and closed the door with a "bang".
I know that both of them make sense, and the two are not contradictory: the birth of a country is like the birth of a baby, but there will be more difficulties and greater pain.
In the summer of 1971, I returned to my motherland that I had been away from for 26 years. That day, when I flew east from Myanmar on Air France and entered the airline over Yunnan, the pilot said, "We have entered Chinese airspace!" My excitement at that time was indescribable.
Arrived in Shanghai in the evening. My mother and younger siblings picked me up at the airport. Let’s go to Huashan Hospital to visit my father together.
In the summer of 1972, I returned to China to visit relatives for the second time. My father is still in the hospital and is even weaker. On the morning of May 12 of the following year, my father passed away at the age of 77.
