80 years ago, a 23-year-old talented woman with a strong Republic of China style stepped into the gate of the University of Berkeley in the United States and started an extraordinary journey of life. She is the physicist Wu Jianxiong known as "Oriental Madame Curie ".
Although ranks in the top ten talented women in the Republic of China, and married the grandson of Yuan Shikai, compared with Zhang Ailing, Lin Huiyin, Lu Xiaoman, etc., Wu Jianxiong is much "low-key" because she is engaged in boring physics experiments in the eyes of women.
htmlOn February 13, thinking about the unfinished New Year atmosphere, I, a "republic of the Republic of China", came to Wu Jianxiong's hometown, Taicang, Jiangsu. Although she has passed away for 20 years, walking in the Liuhe Ancient Town, she can still see traces of her stay here at any time: Wu Jianxiong’s former residence, Wu Jianxiong’s Science and Technology Building, Wu Jianxiong’s statue, Wu Jianxiong’s cemetery...
Wu Jianxiong was born in a typical Chinese intellectual family. His father Wu Zhongyi was a visionary and enlightened gentleman. Wu Jianxiong is the second generation of the word "Jian" and his father was named after "heroes", hence the name Jianxiong. Although she is a daughter, her father hopes that she will not let down her beauties, have ambitions for men, and accumulates strength and becomes a hero. Because her father likes Ziwei Tree, he even gave her a nickname "Viwei". Nowadays, a crape myrtle tree planted by Wu Zhongyi has become a landscape for people to recall the father and daughter. Wu Zhongyi has always attached importance to education, so he will naturally not miss his children's enlightenment education. Wu Jianxiong has an amazing memory and a stronger understanding of arithmetic. But in Wu Zhongyi's view, the main reason why China is backward and bullied by foreigners is that science is underdeveloped, so he often goes to bookstores in Shanghai to buy some books, newspapers and magazines about scientific knowledge for his children. The scientific anecdotes published in Shanghai's "Shenbao" are very consistent with Wu Jianxiong's taste. While other girls were still glad that they didn't have to wrap their feet, Xiao Jianxiong already knew the natural science knowledge of the pressure of the atmosphere, the buoyancy of water, and what thunder and lightning were like, and began to do some simple and interesting scientific experiments with his brother as he saw it in the book and heard it on the radio.
When I was in school, at the Mingde Girls' School founded by my father, Wu Jianxiong, who was in his teenage years old, knew the broad mind of "happy with the world and worry with the world", and understood that "those who know it are not as good as those who like it, and those who like it are not as good as those who enjoy it" is the best learning attitude.
Influenced by his father's education to save the country, Wu Jianxiong was later admitted to Suzhou No. 2 Women's Normal School. During this period, she went to Soviet University to listen to Hu Shi’s speeches many times, often causing the young Wu Jianxiong to "excite and be excited". Wu Jianxiong once said that the two people who influenced her the most in her life were her father and the other was Mr. Hu Shi.
1929 Wu Jianxiong was admitted to the National Central University in Nanjing. In the first year of school, she actually went to Shanghai China Public School where Hu Shi was the principal. Hu Shi didn't know her at that time. Later, during a history exam, Hu Shi, who was an invigilator, found that the little girl sitting in the front row had finished the three-hour test paper in two hours. He browsed the answer sheet and said excitedly: "I have never seen a student understand the 300-year ideological history of the Qing Dynasty so thoroughly." From then on, Hu Shi encouraged Wu Jianxiong from time to time. Wu Jianxiong often said that her research results are "just based on the scientific method of 'bold assumptions and careful verification' advocated by Mr. Hu." Hu Shi also said in public that having a teacher-student relationship with Wu Jianxiong was the most proud and proud thing in his life.
Later, Wu Jianxiong transferred from the Department of Mathematics of Central University to the Department of Physics. The teachers and classmates were puzzled and thought that she would definitely make achievements in the field of mathematics, but they didn't know that she had a "special love" for physics.
Wu Jianxiong knows that the top global physics research organization is in the United States, and she decided to go to the United States for further studies. In 1936, Wu Jianxiong came to study at the University of California in Berkeley, USA. However, it is not easy to enter the Berkeley Department of Physics, and Wu Jianxiong needs to undergo a test by Bai Ji, director of the Department of Physics. Although Bai Ji's ability and contributions are praised, he is biased against foreigners and women, and Wu Jianxiong accounts for both.During the interview, Wu Jianxiong looked calm, dressed in a cheongsam, behaved dignifiedly, and introduced his study and research in China in an orderly manner. Bai Ji made an exception and accepted Wu Jianxiong's admission application.
Although the Western scientific community was always full of gender bias that "physical science experiments are the male field", this bias was broken again and again in the face of Wu Jianxiong's rigorous experimental spirit and error-free experimental results. Jianxiong's doctoral thesis supervisor - Lawrence, winner of the 1939 Nobel Prize in Physics, learned that Wu Jianxiong was suffering from the rejection of female crop physics teachers after graduation, and did not hesitate to be her recommendation. Princeton University accepted the first female physics teacher for the first time.
Another mentor of Wu Jianxiong, the 1959 Nobel Prize winner, Segray, took great care of her. It was Segray who guided Wu Jianxiong to discover the inert gas "xenon" that has a key impact on the chain reaction of uranium nuclear division, which established her position in the physical world. He commented on Wu Jianxiong: "Her willpower and dedication to work remind people of Madame Curie, but she is more involved in the world, elegance and wisdom."
1956, Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao collaborated on research and proposed the theory of parity non-conservation in weak interactions. As soon as the theory was proposed, it caused a great shock in the physics community. Many influential physicists did not care about it, and even believed that there was no need to spend time to verify it. With his extraordinary insight, Wu Jianxiong realized the importance and significance of this experiment. In the same year, she used impeccable experiments to verify the correctness of the theory. This experimental result promoted the development of physics and also pushed 35-year-old Yang Zhenning and 31-year-old Lee Zhengdao to the Nobel Prize in Physics, but the only one missing from the podium was the female physicist.
Wu Jianxiong, who missed the Nobel Prize due to gender bias, did not stop doing research. She was still wearing her own cut cheongsam and was busy doing experiments in the laboratory. In her eyes, "fame and fortune can be ignored, but experiments cannot be stopped." Since then, Wu Jianxiong has successively used experiments to prove important results such as nuclear β decay in the law of vector flow conservation, other contributions to β decay research, and experiments on basic theories of quantum mechanics.
Due to outstanding scientific achievements, various honors followed one after another. In 1975, Wu Jianxiong was elected as the first female president of the American Physical Society. In the same year, he was awarded the National Medal of Science by US President Ford at the White House, which is the highest scientific honor in the United States. In 1976, Israel established the Wolf Prize, specially designed for those who deserved but did not receive the Nobel Prize, and Wu Jianxiong was the first winner of the prize.
Wu Jianxiong took fame and fortune very lightly, and she always thought she was an ordinary Chinese woman. She loves cheongsams. Whenever she attends various important occasions, she always prepares a proper cheongsam for herself to show respect for her motherland; in her living room, Chinese calligraphy and paintings is hung, and many ancient Chinese books and some porcelain are collected on the bookshelf; in her speech, she can't help but mention the motherland...
37 years after leaving home, Wu Jianxiong finally embarked on the road to return to China in 1973, and his parents were no longer there at that time. In 1984, Wu Jianxiong attended the inauguration ceremony of his alma mater, Mingde Building and donated solely to build the Ziwei Building of Mingde School. Four years later, he donated a huge sum of millions of dollars to set up the "Wu Zhongyi Scholarship" to express his heart. In 1992, four Chinese Nobel Prize winners: Lee Zhengdao, Yang Zhenning, Ding Zhaozhong , and Li Yuanzhe initiated the establishment of the "Wu Jianxiong Academic Foundation" in Taipei to surprise Wu Jianxiong on his 80th birthday. She repeatedly declined and actually hid. Wu Jianxiong said: "I don't like to show off. It's my duty to do research. I'm just lucky and the results are pretty good. Don't set up a foundation in my name."
In 1997, Wu Jianxiong passed away at the age of 85. In addition to returning to her hometown, her only last wish is to donate more than 2 million yuan to her alma mater to build a science and technology building.
Author: Mingxin
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