Ting, Samuel Chao Chung (1936-…), an American-born Chinese scientist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1976. He shared the prize with Burton Richter, an American scientist. The award was made for their discovery of an subatomic particle called the psi, or J, particle. A psi particle is made up of a quark and an antiquark, two elementary particles which are not made up of smaller units. Quarks combine together to form more familiar subatomic particles such as protons and neutrons. See Psi particle and Quark .
Ting, also known as Ding Zhaozhong, was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, when his parents were visiting the United States. He spent his early years in mainland China and Taiwan. In 1956 he returned to the United States, and was educated at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor graduating in mathematics and physics. Later he worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva in Switzerland, and at Columbia University in the United States. In 1967, Ting became a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
