Lee, Yuan Tseh (1936-…), a Chinese-born American scientist, shared the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1986 with fellow American Dudley Herschbach, and John Polanyi of Canada (see Herschbach, Dudley Robert ; Polanyi, John Charles ). Lee was awarded the prize for his development of the crossed molecular beam technique for studying chemical reactions. This technique involves creating high-speed jets of molecules or atoms, which collide so that some individual molecules or atoms react with each other. This method yields information about the behavior of molecules or atoms that ordinary chemical reactions cannot provide.
Yuan Tseh Lee was born in Taiwan and studied at the National Taiwan University and the National Tsing Hua University. He gained his doctorate in the United States at the University of California at Berkeley in 1965. He then worked on ion beams. An ion is an atom that is charged because it has gained or lost electrons. Ions can be accelerated by electric fields to form high-speed beams of particles. In 1967, Lee moved to Harvard University, to work with Herschbach. Herschbach experimented with crossed molecular beams, but he could only use particular types of atoms. With his collaborators, Lee constructed a universal crossed molecular beam apparatus. Lee then moved to the University of Chicago, where he constructed a more advanced version of the universal machine. Later he returned to the University of California, taking a post at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as principal investigator. He became an American citizen in 1974.
