Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize (Swedish pronunciation: [nʊˈbɛl], Swedish definite form, singular: Nobelpriset; Norwegian: Nobelprisen) is a set of annual international awards bestowed in a number of categories by Swedish and Norwegian committees in recognition of academic, cultural and/or scientific advances.

The will of the Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel established the prizes in 1895. The prizes in Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics, and Physiology or Medicine were first awarded in 1901. The related Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was established by Sweden's central bank in 1968. Medals made before 1980 were struck in 23 carat gold, and later from 18 carat green gold plated with a 24 carat gold coating. Between 1901 and 2015, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences were awarded 573 times to 900 people and organizations. With some receiving the Nobel Prize more than once, this makes a total of 870 individuals (822 men and 48 women) and 23 organizations.

The prize ceremonies take place annually in Stockholm, Sweden, except for the peace prize which is held in Oslo, Norway and each recipient, or laureate, receives a gold medal, a diploma and a sum of money that has been decided by the Nobel Foundation. (As of 2012, each prize was worth SEK8 million or about US$1.2 million, €0.93 million or £0.6 million.) The Nobel Prize is widely regarded as the most prestigious award available in the fields of literature, medicine, physics, chemistry, peace, and economics.

List of Nobel laureates

The Nobel Prizes (Swedish: Nobelpriset, Norwegian: Nobelprisen) are prizes awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institute, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make outstanding contributions in the fields of chemistry, physics, literature, peace, and physiology or medicine. They were established by the 1895 will of Alfred Nobel, which dictates that the awards should be administered by the Nobel Foundation. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was established in 1968 by the Sveriges Riksbank, the central bank of Sweden, for contributions to the field of economics. Each recipient, or "laureate", receives a gold medal, a diploma, and a sum of money, which is decided by the Nobel Foundation, yearly.

Prize

Each prize is awarded by a separate committee; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards the Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and Economics, the Karolinska Institute awards the Prize in Physiology or Medicine, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee awards the Prize in Peace. Each recipient receives a medal, a diploma and a monetary award that has varied throughout the years. In 1901, the recipients of the first Nobel Prizes were given 150,782 SEK, which is equal to 7,731,004 SEK in December 2007. In 2008, the laureates were awarded a prize amount of 10,000,000 SEK. The awards are presented in Stockholm in an annual ceremony on December 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death.

Tsung-Dao Lee

Tsung-Dao Lee (T. D. Lee; Chinese: 李政道; pinyin: Lǐ Zhèngdào; born November 24, 1926) is a Chinese-born American physicist, known for his work on parity violation, the Lee Model, particle physics, relativistic heavy ion (RHIC) physics, nontopological solitons and soliton stars. He holds the rank of University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1953 and from which he retired in 2012.

In 1957, Lee, at the age of 30, won the Nobel Prize in Physics with C. N. Yang for their work on the violation of the parity law in weak interactions, which Chien-Shiung Wu experimentally verified.

Lee was the youngest Nobel laureate after World War II until Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. He is the fourth youngest Nobel laureate in history after W. L. Bragg (who won the prize at 25 with his father W. H. Bragg in 1915), Werner Heisenberg (who won in 1932 also at 30) and Malala Yousafzai. Lee and Yang were the first Chinese laureates. Since he became a naturalized American citizen in 1962, Lee is also the youngest American ever to have won a Nobel Prize.

Chen-Ning Yang

Chen-Ning Franklin Yang, also known as Yang Zhenning (simplified Chinese: 杨振宁; traditional Chinese: 楊振寧; pinyin: Yáng Zhènníng; Mandarin pronunciation: [jɑ̌ŋ ts̜ʰə̂n nǐŋ]; born October 1, 1922), is a Chinese-born American physicist who works on statistical mechanics and particle physics. He and Tsung-dao Lee received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on parity nonconservation of weak interaction. The two proved theoretically that one of the basic quantum-mechanics laws, the conservation of parity, is violated in the so-called weak nuclear reactions, those nuclear processes that result in the emission of beta or alpha particles.

Biography

Yang was born in Hefei, Anhui, China; his father, Yang Wu-Chih (楊武之) (1896–1973), was a mathematician, and his mother, Luo Meng-hua (羅孟華), was a housewife. Yang attended elementary school and high school in Beijing, and in the autumn of 1937 his family moved to Hefei after the Japanese invaded China. In 1938 they moved to Kunming, Yunnan, where the National Southwestern Associated University was located. In the same year, as a second year student, Yang passed the entrance examination and studied at the National Southwestern Associated University. He received his bachelor's degree in 1942, with his thesis on the application of group theory to molecular spectra, under the supervision of Ta-You Wu. He continued to study graduate courses there for two years under the supervision of Wang Zhuxi, working on statistical mechanics. In 1944 he received his master's degree from Tsinghua University, which had moved to Kunming during the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), and was subsequently awarded from the Boxer Indemnity, a scholarship set up by the United States government using part of the money China had been forced to pay following the Boxer Rebellion. He was delayed for one year, during which time he taught in a middle school as a teacher and studied field theory.

Tsinghua University

Coordinates: 40°00′00″N 116°19′36″E / 40.00000°N 116.32667°E / 40.00000; 116.32667

Tsinghua University (abbreviated THU; Chinese: 清华大学, pinyin: Qīnghuá Dàxué) is a research university located in Beijing, China, and one of the nine members in the elite C9 League of universities. Tsinghua was established in 1911 as "Tsinghua College," and renamed to "Tsinghua School" in 1912 and "National Tsinghua University" in the 1928. With its motto of Self-Discipline and Social Commitment, Tsinghua University describes itself as being dedicated to academic excellence, the well-being of Chinese society and to global development. Alongside Peking University, Tsinghua University is consistently ranked as the top higher learning institution in mainland China.

History

In the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, American Secretary of State John Hay suggested that the US $30 million plus Boxer indemnity paid by China to the United States was excessive. After much negotiation with ambassador Liang Cheng, President Theodore Roosevelt obtained congressional approval in 1909 to reduce the Qing Dynasty indemnity payment by US$10.8 million, on the condition that these funds would be used as scholarships for Chinese students to study in the United States. Using this fund, the Tsinghua College (清华学堂; Qīnghuá Xuétáng) was established in Beijing, on 29 April 1911 on the site of a former royal garden, to serve as a preparatory school for students to be sent by the government to study in the United States. . The faculty members for sciences were recruited by the YMCA from the United States and its graduates transferred directly to American schools as juniors upon graduation. In 1925, the school established its College Department and started its research institute on Chinese studies.