Chinese American Nobel laureate who pioneered modern particle theory dies at 103

Nobel laureate Chen Ning Yang, who spent decades advancing physics in both the U.S. and China, died in Beijing on Saturday at 103 due to illness, according to Chinese state media.

After earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 1948, Yang joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and later Stony Brook University, where he founded the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics. His 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, shared with Tsung-Dao Lee, recognized their discovery that weak nuclear interactions violate parity symmetry, a breakthrough that overturned one of physics’ long-standing principles.

Yang’s collaboration with Robert Mills in 1954 produced the Yang-Mills gauge theory, now a cornerstone of the Standard Model describing fundamental forces in particle physics. Over his career he published more than 200 scientific papers and mentored generations of researchers across continents.

Returning to China in the 1990s, Yang became a professor at Tsinghua University, promoting international academic exchange and contributing to China’s modernization of theoretical science. Tsinghua University said in a statement that “Professor Yang is one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, having made revolutionary contributions to the development of modern physics.”