Tsung-Dao Lee 李政道, Nobel Prize in Physics 1957

Tsung-Dao "T. D." Lee 李政道 is a Chinese-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 Franklin C N Yang for their work on the violation of the parity law in weak interactions, which Chien-Shiung Wu experimentally verified in 1956, with her so-called Wu experiment.

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 William L. Bragg (who won the prize at 25 with his father William H. Bragg in 1915), Werner Heisenberg (who won in 1932 also at 30) and Malala Yousafzai (awarded at just 17). 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.

Family

Tsung Dao (T. D.) Lee's ancestral hometown is Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. T. D. was born in Shanghai.

Lee's father Chun-kang Lee (simplified Chinese: 李骏康; traditional Chinese: 李駿康; pinyin: Lǐ Jùn-kāng), one of the first graduates of the University of Nanking, was a chemical industrialist and merchant who was involved in China's early development of modern synthesized fertilizer. Lee's grandfather Chong-tan Lee (Chinese: 李仲覃; pinyin: Lǐ Zhòng-tán) was the first Chinese Catholic rector in Suzhou whose residence was the famous St. John's Church in Suzhou (蘇州聖約翰堂).

Lee has four brothers and one sister. Educator Robert C.T. Lee is one of T. D.'s brothers. Lee's mother Chang and brother Robert C. T. moved to Taiwan in the 1950s. They were accidentally jailed in Taiwan during the White Terror. Personal life

Chin and Lee were married in 1950 and have two sons: James and Stephen. Lee reads whodunit novels when not working on physics. His English given name differs dramatically from the Chinese Romanization systems in use at the time of his childhood, Wade-Giles and Gwoyeu Romatzyh. Tsung-Dao Lee's publications are all under the name of T.D. Lee.