"You have contributed more to the world than I have, and I want to thank you!"
In 1973, the famous Chinese physicist Yang Zhenning returned to China for the fourth time, and was warmly welcomed by the Party Central Committee and met with Chairman Mao Zedong.
This sentence comes from the dialogue between Chairman Mao and Yang Zhenning, and Chairman Mao's words are full of attention to Yang Zhenning and a strong interest in natural science, which makes Yang Zhenning feel flattered.
Because, since the 1970s, Chairman Mao's health has deteriorated, and he rarely meets guests. It is undoubtedly a great honor to meet Chairman Mao at this time and to be praised by the other side.
At the end of the talks, the staff took a group photo for Chairman Mao and Yang Zhenning, recording the wonderful moments of the two great historical figures in the same frame.
This original photograph with significant gold content was eventually given by Yang Zhenning to Du Yuming, a former senior Kuomintang general.
Du Yuming enshrined this group photo as a treasure, solemnly framed in a photo frame, hung high on the living room wall, so that guests can see it at the first time when they enter the door.
The guests who see this group photo will have a doubt in the shock.
How could a picture of the great man and Yang Zhenning end up in the home of a former Nationalist general?
Du Yuming is a relationship with Yang Zhenning
The reason why Yang Zhenning gave this precious photo to Du Yuming is because the other party is his father-in-law.
Yang Zhenning's wife Du Zhili was Du Yuming's eldest daughter, and the son-in-law relationship between Du Yuming and Yang Zhenning was not widely known during that period.
What is even more lamentable is that the son-in-law of Weng zhenning and his wife only met for the first time after more than 20 years of marriage, which can't help but make people wonder what twists and turns there are in between.
To understand the source of this problem, we must also start from Yang Zhenning's study experience and Du Zhili's understanding.
Yang Zhenning was born on October 1, 1922 in Hefei, Anhui Province, on the same day as the National Day of New China.
Yang Zhenning's father, Yang Wuzhi, studied in the United States and received degrees from Stanford University and the University of Chicago, becoming the first doctor of mathematics in Chinese history, and after returning to China in 1928, he taught at Xiamen University and Tsinghua University.
When Yang Wuzhi returned to China, Yang Zhenning was already 6 years old, and under the influence and guidance of his father, he was full of enthusiasm for learning knowledge.
In the second year of the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Yang Zhenning was admitted to the Southwest United University with excellent results and graduated to teach, and Du Zhili was one of his students.
In 1945, Yang Zhenning applied for the Gengzi Compensation Scholarship and obtained the qualification to study in the United States, and entered the University of Chicago, where his father had studied.
At the end of 1949, Yang Zhenning and Du Zhili were unexpectedly reunited in Princeton, and the two who had a good feeling for each other stepped into the marriage hall the following year.
However, the parents of the couple did not come to the wedding to offer their blessings.
All this is also due to that special historical era, let us first understand the different miserable fates of Du Yuming's family in that period of ups and downs.
Du Zhili's father, Du Yuming, is a resounding name, he participated in the Northern Expedition, the War of Resistance Against Japan, the War of Liberation, he was once Chiang Kai-shek's confidant and favorite general, known as the "fire brigade leader".
During the Great Wall War of Resistance, Du Yuming, then the commander of the 25th Division, was wounded when the division commander Guan Linzheng was wounded, and he was ordered to take over the command, annihilating more than 2,000 enemy troops, and was promoted because of his outstanding performance, and later took charge of the first mechanized unit of the Nationalist Army, the Fifth Army.
Du Yuming was good at using lightning tactics and advocating offense, and was one of the few generals at that time who dared to confront the elite of the Japanese army.
In the Battle of Kunlun Pass, Du Yuming led the Fifth Army to meet the elite Fifth Division of the Japanese Army, known as the "Steel Army", almost completely annihilated the enemy's 21st Brigade Regiment, killed the brigade commander Masao Nakamura, and successfully captured Kunlun Pass.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Long Yun, the "King of Yunnan" who held the Dian army and guarded Yunnan, became a serious problem for Chiang Kai-shek's confidants, and because Du Yuming and Long Yun had a close personal relationship and won his trust, he was sent by Chiang to Yunnan to plot to seize power.
Taking advantage of the fact that the main force of the Dian army was surrendered and the interior was empty, Du Yuming launched a mutiny to besiege Long Yun at Mount Wuhua, forcing him to disarm and return Yunnan to Chiang Kai-shek's control.
In October 1945, Du Yuming was appointed as the commander of the Northeast Security, went to the northeast to engage the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army led by Lin Biao, and after leading his troops to conquer Shanhaiguan, marched all the way north, successively capturing the western Liaoning and southern Liaoning regions.
The Northeast Democratic Coalition Army suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Siping and had to withdraw from the city, and was even forced by Du Yuming to retreat north of the Songhua River at one point.
All of the above shows that Du Yuming is talented and not a mediocre person. In that turbulent war era, he was really an upper-class figure who walked in the trend of history.
However, all the glorious past will be turned into a cloud of smoke as the three major battles are launched.
Ignoring the voices of the people of the whole country, the Kuomintang launched an unjust war. Eventually, the building will fall, and in the Battle of Huaihai, Du Yuming's troops will fail to break through and be captured, and will be escorted to the Beijing Gongdelin War Criminals Management Center.
Although Du Yuming was a general of the defeated army, he was not a vulgar and death-afraid person, and he committed suicide several times to show his military honor, but he was saved by the People's Liberation Army.
At that time, Du Yuming, who had been fighting for many years, had extremely poor health, high myopia, disabled legs and feet, and suffered from tuberculosis, stomach ulcers, kidney stones, spondylitis and other diseases, so the doctor removed his left kidney.
The Party Central Committee did not hesitate to spare manpower and material resources, took good care of him, and even used the original small amount of foreign exchange to go abroad to buy precious medicines, which greatly improved his condition.
Du Yuming was grateful for the Communist Party's recklessness, and since then he has let go of the mustard in his heart and actively reformed.
However, Chiang Kai-shek was extremely annoyed by Du Yuming's abandonment of the secret, and coupled with the fact that his wife Cao Xiuqing had joined the Communist Party, his family was brought to Taiwan and did not receive the same kindness as the families of other generals.
How difficult is life for Du's wife and children in Taiwan?
Mr. and Mrs. Du Yuming have a total of 6 children, except for Du Zhili and Du Zhiren, who are studying in the United States, the other 4 are in Taiwan with their mother Cao Xiuqing, and they are all restricted from leaving the country.
Cao Xiuqinggui is the wife of a lieutenant general, but she cannot get the treatment she deserves, and can only work in a tobacco and wine factory in Taipei, relying on a meager income of NT$3,000 a month to support her four children and elderly mother-in-law.
However, the disaster of the Du family did not stop there, and in 1953, Du Zhiren, who graduated from Princeton High School, was admitted to Harvard University, a top university, but the high tuition fees made him helpless.
At that time, Yang Zhenning was just an ordinary researcher, in addition to taking care of his life, there was not much extra money to help his wife and brother, and in desperation, Du Zhiren could only ask his mother Cao Xiuqing to apply for a student loan from the Bank of Taiwan.
Du Zhiren knew that this money was not easy to come by, and he cut down on food and clothing during his college years, worked part-time everywhere, and tried his best to be frugal, but it was only a drop in the bucket, but the fatal thing was that the Bank of Taiwan suspended his credit qualification in the third year of his enrollment.
Affected by this, Du Zhiren fell seriously ill and could not continue to work part-time, so that his studies would not be abandoned halfway, he had to write to his mother again for help, begging for $3,000 to complete his studies.
Cao Xiuqing, who was helpless, could only choose to ask Chiang Kai-shek for help, but Chiang Kai-shek only gave 1,000 US dollars, and he had to pay it in two years, but this amount was of no help to Du Zhiren.
Uprooted from home, sent people under the fence, fell in the middle of the family road. This made the young Du Zhiren depressed, and Chiang Kai-shek's lack of affection and widowhood even cut off his last hope.
Du Zhiren, who was facing dropping out of school and had an uncertain future, looked for a short-sighted view and committed suicide by taking a whole bottle of sleeping pills at the home of Yang Zhenning and his wife, at the age of 22.
It can be seen how embarrassing and desolate the life of Du Yuming's family is, but he and his wife and children are across the sea, even if they have the heart to help, they can't do anything, this kind of pain and suffering can be imagined.
However, what he did not expect was that the fate of the Du family after that had ushered in a turnaround because of his son-in-law Yang Zhenning, whom he had never met.
Yang Zhenning won the Nobel Prize
The year after Du Zhiren's suicide, Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao proposed the famous "law of non-conservation of cosmology", which won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The law of non-conservation of cosmology is considered one of the most significant disruptive discoveries of modern physics, and many traditional conceptions of physics have been reshaped as a result.
It is precisely because this achievement is so significant that it took only about 1 year from the publication of the paper to the final award, which is the fastest ever approved, and the average length of the entire Process of the Nobel Prize is 18 years.
Yang Zhenning's achievements are far more than this, in the four fields of physics such as statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, particle physics, and field theory.
Yang Zhenning has 13 Nobel Prize-level achievements, because the Nobel Prize stipulates that each scholar can only win awards once in a lifetime in the same field, so the Nobel Prize is simply not enough to reflect Yang Zhenning's greatness.
In addition, sheldon Glashow, Steven Weinberg, and other physicists have also based on Yang Zhenning's theory and achieved results in their respective research fields, and have won the Nobel Prize.
It is no exaggeration to say that Yang Zhenning pointed out the direction for the development of modern physics, which shows how much position he has in academia.
Yang Zhenning, who has achieved fame, always thinks of Du Zhiren and is always sad, if all this can come sooner, why did his wife and brother die young?
Yang Zhenning still held a passport of the Republic of China when he won the award, such a world-renowned figure, let Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan's mind move, he changed his previous indifference to the Du family, took the initiative to let his wife Song Meiling invite Cao Xiuqing to come as a guest, and after the death of Du Yuming's mother, he also specially arranged a beautiful funeral.
Chiang Kai-shek even allowed Cao Xiuqing to go abroad alone to visit Yang Zhenning and his wife in the United States, and his motives could not have been more obvious, and he hoped to take advantage of Cao Xiuqing's in-laws and Yang Zhenning's in-laws to draw this great scientist to Taiwan and serve the party-state.
To have the opportunity to meet her eldest daughter who has been separated for a long time, Cao Xiuqing naturally could not refuse. After Yang Zhenning and Cao Xiuqing met in the United States in 1958, they were heartbroken by what she had suffered over the years.
Du Zhili resolutely opposed his mother's return to Taiwan to suffer, and applied for permanent residence for her, cao Xiuqing hated Chiang Kai-shek even more in his heart, how could he be a lobbyist for him and push his son-in-law into the fire pit?
Cao Xiuqing has never returned to Taiwan, and her four children who remained in Taiwan have been separated from each other until more than 20 years later.
As the first Chinese scientist to win the Nobel Prize, Yang Zhenning naturally received the attention of New China. Zhou Enlai specially sent Yang and Li's mentor Zhang Wenyu to Sweden to visit them and express congratulations in person.
Zhang Wenyu also brought a special gift, that is, a handwritten congratulatory message from Yang Zhenning's father-in-law, Du Yuming, in which Du Yuming praised Yang Zhenning as "the pride of the Chinese nation", which touched him.
Du Yuming was pardoned two years after Yang Zhenning won the award, and later served as a member of the People's Political Consultative Conference, a deputy to the National People's Congress, a standing committee member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and a commissioner of literature and history of the Literature and History Research Committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
He compiled his personal experience and successively wrote such works as "The Beginning and End of the Huaihai Campaign", "Overview of the Liaoshen Campaign", and "A Brief Introduction to the Chinese Expeditionary Force's Operations against Japan".
Looking back on the golden iron horse of the first half of his life, Du Yuming, who walked out of the Gongdelin, could not help but sigh as if he were in another life, he was very satisfied with his new life, but he could not contain the thought of his family.
In 1963, Cao Xiuqing departed from the United States and flew to the mainland via Geneva, and after more than a decade of separation, Du Yuming and his wife were finally reunited in Beijing.
Seeing Du Yuming, who was physically healthy and refreshed, Cao Xiuqing was very pleased, lamenting that he had "suffered the hardships of the Kuomintang, but enjoyed the blessings of the Communist Party", and since then she has also accompanied her husband and settled in the mainland.
Du Yuming and his wife were reunited, but Yang Zhenning's father, Yang Wuzhi, was eager for his son's return to China, and he went abroad three times in 1957, 1960, and 1962 to meet Yang Zhenning, hoping that he could return to China.
Yang Zhenning studied in the West, and as the son-in-law of a former Nationalist general, and close relatives in Taiwan, his identity is sensitive and he cannot easily return to China.
The father and son had some contradictions and disputes because of his return to China.
In 1964, Yang Zhenning made another highly controversial decision to become a U.S. citizen, which is the biggest reason why many people are prejudiced against Yang Zhenning today.
Yang Zhenning is engaged in basic theoretical research, and it is indispensable to go out to exchange and lecture, and in order to make academic achievements to a higher level, he has to make trade-offs.
At that time, the time was not yet ripe to return to the mainland, the old passport of the Republic of China was about to expire, and if you wanted to continue to use the top laboratories abroad, joining the United States citizenship became an option in front of you.
For the insults of the outside world, Yang Zhenning never made any explanations and arguments, after all, even his father was disappointed in his choice, how could he ask for the understanding of others?
Although he was unable to return to China for a while, Yang Zhenning always had his heart set on the motherland.
As one of the founders of the National Chinese Association, he used his fame and influence to fight for the rights and interests of overseas Chinese, while also actively lobbying the U.S. government to call for the normalization of Sino-US relations.
In 1969, Japan and the U.S. government launched negotiations to return Okinawa, and the Diaoyu Islands attached to the island of Taiwan were included in Okinawa's range, causing a global uproar among Chinese people and a huge protest in the United States.
Yang Zhenning also actively participated in the defense of the Diaoyu Islands, not only taking the lead in jointly signing donations to help Chinese groups publish their voices in the newspaper, but also attending the hearing of the US Senate as a Chinese representative.
Finally, with the efforts of many parties, the US State Department issued a statement saying that the United States would take a neutral position on the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute.
With the relaxation of Sino-US relations and the lifting of the ban on its own citizens traveling to China, Yang Zhenning, who was like an arrow, managed to obtain a visa at the first time, becoming the first Chinese scientist to return to China to visit.
In 1971, Yang Zhenning and his wife, who had returned to China, were cordially received by Premier Zhou Enlai, and he finally met his father-in-law, Du Yuming, whom he had never met.
At Yang Zhenning's request, he also met his long-cherished friend Deng Jiaxian, and when he learned from Deng Jiaxian that the mainland's atomic bomb was entirely the result of Chinese self-reliance, Yang Zhenning could not help but burst into tears, he was proud of his friend's achievements and regretted that he had not been able to participate in it.
Yang Zhenning's experience of returning to China and visiting China is considered to be an "ice-breaking trip" for the Chinese and American academic circles, and its significance is no less than the famous "table tennis diplomacy", and many Chinese scholars have developed curiosity and yearning for new China, creating conditions for the return of talents in the future.
In 1972, Yang Zhenning returned to China for the second time, and a delegation of American scientists headed by Marvin Goldberg, chairman of the American Association of Scientists, was also invited to visit China in the same year.
Since then, Yang Zhenning has returned to China almost every year, in addition to communicating with domestic experts and scholars, it is more important to visit relatives.
In May 1973, Yang Wuzhi died of illness, which made Yang Zhenning sad, believing that his American citizenship was a knot that his father could not unravel until his death.
In addition to his father, Du Yuming and Cao Xiuqing are also Yang Zhenning's relatives, he deliberately gave his photo of himself and the chairman to his father-in-law, which shows that he is close, and Du Yuming cherishes the photo so much, and his pride in his son-in-law is also overflowing.
Du Yuming's later years were calm and happy, and in 1978 he was re-elected as a deputy to the Fifth National People's Congress and a standing committee member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
Three years later, accompanied by his wife and daughter and son-in-law, Du Yuming died of illness at Peking Union Medical College Hospital at the age of 77.
Du Yuming left his last words on his deathbed: "Thinking deeply about the critical illness, the only words of the most caring people are: I hope that the students, relatives, friends, and compatriots in Taiwan will put the great righteousness of the nation first, promote peaceful reunification at an early date, and jointly build our ancient civilization into a modern power, so as to benefit future generations." ”
Yang Zhenning's contribution to domestic scientific development
Yang Zhenning did not live up to his father-in-law's will and entrustment, and he used his knowledge and vision to contribute to the modernization of New China and benefit his descendants.
He founded the "China Academic Exchange Committee" in the United States, and with the help of this organization, many domestic scholars have obtained the opportunity to study abroad, improved their academic level, and broadened their international horizons.
Under his initiative, the Junior Class of the University of Science and Technology of China, the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Yilida Youth Invention Award, the Wu Jianxiong Physics Prize, and the Chen Shengsheng Mathematics Prize have been established successively, and the physics laboratories of dozens of universities in China have been built under his guidance.
Yang Zhenning has also always treated China's scientific and technological development with a rigorous attitude of seeking truth from facts, opposing greed for high and seeking speed, picking up seedlings and encouraging growth, and blindly engaging in an "arms race" in the field of scientific research.
His opposition to the construction of the giant particle collider has caused controversy from the outside world, and his reason is that the project is not only costly, the production ratio is extremely low, the United States is overwhelmed, it is even more meaningless for China to force the launch, and it is pragmatic to prioritize limited funds into applied science and people's livelihood that are more likely to produce results.
Tsinghua University offered him a million annual salary, Yang Zhenning did not take any money, all returned to the campus, in order to recruit top experts, he also donated to build an expert building.
Since his first return to China, he has personally donated more than $6 million to Tsinghua University, relying on his connections and influence. Nearly $1 billion in scientific research funding was raised for Chinese universities.
Yang Zhenning has published more than 30 SCI papers in Tsinghua University, which has improved the research level of Tsinghua University for decades in the fields of cold atoms and condensed matter physics, and has entered the world's popular list in one fell swoop.
Many university professors only want to concentrate on research and are reluctant to engage in teaching, but Yang Zhenning believes that teaching must be taken seriously. He has repeatedly stressed on various occasions that "it is most important to make students interested in physics".
In 1995, he was invited to give a lecture on "University Physics" at CCTV University, and at the age of 82, he was still active in the podium and personally taught undergraduates.
He said: "I have been teaching all my life, and the most proud thing for teachers is that there are students who have really learned something that can enable young people to go into this field." ”
end
In 2017, Yang Zhenning, who has been living in tsinghua garden for more than ten years, regained his Chinese nationality and made up for his father's last wishes, and the scientific giant finally returned to his roots.
In 2019, Yang Zhenning won the "Qiushi Lifetime Achievement Award", becoming the second winner in the history of the award.
In today's scientific community, Yang Zhenning is recognized as a figure comparable to Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein, and is also one of the greatest living physicists.
Some people say that this is an era without a master, but Yang Zhenning is a veritable master, and it is a blessing for my generation to be in the same era and the same nation as such a figure.