Chen Ning Yang, a celebrated physicist and Nobel laureate, passed away on Saturday in Beijing at the age of 103 following an illness, according to state media reports.
Born in 1922 in Hefei, Anhui province, Yang was a Chinese-American physicist known for his contributions to statistical mechanics and the study of symmetry in particle physics.
He was jointly awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics with Tsung-Dao Lee, who died earlier this year. Their groundbreaking work challenged the long-held "parity laws," which assumed that interactions between subatomic particles were identical in mirror-image scenarios. Their findings disproved the concept of "mirror symmetry."
Prior to their research, it was widely accepted that any physical process and its mirror image would behave identically in nature. Yang and Lee demonstrated that this was not universally true, fundamentally altering the understanding of particle physics.
Yang grew up on the campus of Tsinghua University near Beijing, where his father taught mathematics, as detailed in accounts from the Nobel Prize institution.
After earning his undergraduate and master's degrees in China, he moved to the United States after World War II with a fellowship at the University of Chicago.
During his time there, he was influenced by Enrico Fermi, the Italian-American physicist credited with developing the world’s first artificial nuclear reactor.
From 1949 onward, Yang was affiliated with Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, where he attained a professorship in 1955.
Read next
Over 1 million people gather in Madrid for outdoor mass with Pope Leo
Over one million people gathered in Madrid for an open-air mass led by Pope Leo. During the service, the American pontiff highlighted the contradiction between Christian principles and far-right ideology, stating, “No one can kneel before the Lord and despise their brother.”
Crowds began forming hours before dawn on Sunday
Xi Jinping visits Pyongyang to strengthen China-North Korea relations
Xi Jinping has begun a two-day visit to North Korea, marking his first trip to the country in nearly seven years as he seeks to strengthen relations with the ally.
Footage from the Xinhua state news agency showed the Chinese leader and his wife, Peng Liyuan, arriving at Sunan international
Denmark's mullet championship celebrates the 'beautifully ugly' and divisive hairstyle
Copenhagen recently hosted the 2026 Mullet Championship, where more than 1,000 spectators gathered on an outdoor stage to celebrate the enduring hairstyle characterized by short hair in the front and length in the back.
Twelve participants competed in the event, which was organized by 37-year-old electrician Steffen Stiw Weber.