Wu, Chien-shiung, << woo, chehn shung >> (1912-1997), an American experimental physicist, helped disprove the law of the conservation of parity (see Parity ). For about 30 years, most physicists had accepted this law as a universal principle. But in 1957, Wu did an experiment that showed it to be incorrect.
The law stated, in part, that electrons called beta particles, which are emitted by a radioactive nucleus, would fly off in any direction, regardless of the spin of the nucleus. Using atoms of cobalt 60, Wu showed that beta particles were more likely to be emitted in a particular direction that depended on the spin of the cobalt nuclei. Her experiment confirmed a theory proposed in 1956 by two Chinese-born American physicists, Tsung Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang. Lee and Yang shared the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics for their theory.
Wu was born on May 31, 1912, in Liuhe, China, near Shanghai. She moved to the United States in 1936 and received a Ph.D. degree from the University of California at Berkeley. Wu became a professor of physics at Columbia University in 1957. Wu died on Feb. 16, 1997.
