Great women in science
In the male-dominated scientific community, women's contributions are often more difficult to be noticed, and even overwhelmed by many talented women scientists.
In contrast, most people care more about women's appearance, but ignore that they also have great power in both creation and scientific exploration.
Wu Jianxiong, who is known as the Lady of the East Curie, is a good example.
In experimental physics, Wu's achievements have led many people to compare her with Marie Curie.
And in nuclear physics research, without Wu Jianxiong's participation, perhaps the US atomic bomb plan would be postponed further, and the timeline of the War of Resistance Against Japan would also be affected.
Wu Jianxiong in the laboratory
In 1912, Wu Jianxiong was born in Liuhe Town, Taicang County, Jiangsu Province, to an older brother and younger brother.
According to the family tree ranking, she belongs to the "Jian" generation, and her name is derived from the saying "hero Haojie".
In that era of heavy patriarchalism, Wu Jianxiong did not suffer discrimination from her father, which came largely from her family.
Wu Jianxiong has lived in Shuxiangmendi since childhood, and it is here that Wu Jianxiong's primary school education was completed at the Matilda School founded by his father for girls.
Wu Jianxiong was young
Later, when he entered the middle school, Wu Jianxiong came to Suzhou Second Girls' Normal School.
Wu Jianxiong, who had excellent grades, was at the top of his class and was eventually admitted to National Central University.
According to the regulations at the time, students studying here had to work as school teachers for one year.
Among them, she met Hu Shi and later majored in physics.
But as Sino-Japanese relations grew more strained, Mr. Wu had to travel to a safe enough place for his studies, and by this time she was a researcher at the Institute of Physics at Academia Sinica.
Encouraged by his mentor, Professor Gu Jingwei, Wu Jianxiong decided to study overseas and was successfully admitted to the University of Michigan.
Prepare for a new refresher course
But when Wu Jianxiong heard that the University of Michigan was not friendly to women, she decided to go to Berkeley for further study, and Yuan Jialuo introduced her to Raymond Birch, a professor in Berwick's department of physics.
After this, Wu Jianxiong began her physics research and climbed to the peak of scholarship step by step.
Perhaps many people have learned that Wu Jianxiong's main research contribution is the construction of the atomic bomb.
But it is worth noting that Wu Jianxiong's participation in the Manhattan Project in the United States is inseparable from her early physics research.
Wu Jianxiong with his family
Atomic bomb "midwife"
Wu Jianxiong elaborated on experimental physics in His dissertation in Berlick, which is mainly divided into two parts:
One is brake radiation.
This radiation refers to the radiation emitted by the sudden deceleration of charged particles when they collide with atoms or nuclei, mainly related to classical electrodynamics.
It is worth mentioning that regarding the description in electron radiation, Wu Jianxiong mainly studied the occurrence of phosphorus-32 atoms that β decay, and this radioactive isotope can be produced in a cyclotron.
Schematic diagram of β decay
The other part is about the production of xenon radioisotopes.
In the related paper elaboration, Wu Jianxiong described how to use the cyclotron to cause nuclear fission of uranium and produce this radioactive isotope.
This became the key to her future construction of atomic bombs for the United States.
Unfortunately, despite Lawrence and Segerer's recommendation for Wu, she still did not get a position in the university.
So after that, she had to continue to work as a postdoc in the radioactivity laboratory.
Nuclear fission reactions
Earlier in the same period, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strasmann discovered nuclear fission.
Later, German scientists further understood the principle behind it, and nuclear weapons research had a preliminary theoretical basis.
If Germany could build an atomic bomb, the whole world would be doomed.
However, many Scientists in Germany could not bear it, and united various physics gods, including Einstein, who wrote a letter to the US government to warn.
Roosevelt, who appointed U.S. president at the time, learned the whole situation, and the nuclear physics research in the United States was also intensely underway.
The United States is discussing nuclear cooperation with Britain
When the Pacific War broke out in 1942, Wu Jianxiong's interaction with Yuan Jialuo finally brought a sweet wedding.
Unfortunately, due to the impact of the war, there were basically only two people at the wedding scene of the two sides.
Until 1944, Wu's work was almost entirely related to laboratories and teaching, and experimental research was sparse.
In the end, Wu Jianxiong chose to accede to Princeton University's request and direct the Navy's physics research locally.
Back at the Manhattan Project, the U.S. government has gathered scientists to help the program.
But at the time, people did not understand the nature of uranium-235, and the neutron reactor should be confused about how to get it.
Scientists are thinking about how to build an atomic bomb
The entire project discussion lasted from 1941 to 1942, when Edward Taylor proposed to detonate deuterium and tritium and trigger nuclear fusion with the impact of nuclear fission.
However, some people believe that this explosion effect is too strong and may ignite the atmosphere. In short, the whole discussion was endless.
In March 1944, Wu was invited to join Columbia University's Manhattan Project and worked in the Alternative Alloy Materials Laboratory.
His main job responsibilities were to assist in the enrichment gasification and diffusion of uranium enrichment in the project and to develop instruments for monitoring radioactive elements with a team led by Leo Rainwater.
Location of the B reactor in The Hanford Area
As a result, by September, the Manhattan Project had stalled and the reactor in Hanford had gone wrong.
The reactor will experience periodic outages and then restart.
At that time, some people speculated that the products of nuclear fission may have affected the reactor, could it be that there is a problem with some isotope?
If so, neutrons absorb cross-sectional material so that neutrons cannot be absorbed by fissile material for reaction.
The question is what exactly is the substance that captures these neutrons?
Thinking of this, Segre suddenly recalled that Wu Jianxiong had done research on xenon radioisotopes in Berkeley.
Wu Jianxiong back times magazine selection
So the Manhattan project further deepened Wu Jianxiong, and eventually with her help, the researchers found:
The culprit responsible for the abnormal shutdown of nuclear reactors is the xenon-135 isotope.
It was only then that the nuclear fission reaction in the atomic bomb continued to progress, and it was not long after the first atomic bomb was successfully tested in the United States.
Later stories are known to everyone.
Wu Jianxiong attended the outstanding women's event site
Conservation of the scientific community
After the end of World War II, Wu Jianxiong's experimental physics research continued to deepen and was further invested in the study of β decay.
In the early years, scientists had studied the decay of β, but the results of Alvarez's experiments contradicted Enrico Fermi's theory.
Jianxiong Wu, who works in a particle lab
Therefore, Wu Jianxiong doubted whether there was a problem in the experimental process, and in order to test this idea, she re-improved the entire experimental process.
The resulting results are consistent with Fermi's theory, thus confirming that the difference in Alvarez's results comes from experimental errors.
Wu Jianxiong's reproduction of Alvarez's experiment
During this time, Wu Jianxiong also became acquainted with Lee Jeong-do.
Perhaps Li Zhengdao is not familiar to everyone, but with Li Zhengdao, there is also Yang Zhenning, a famous physicist on the mainland.
At that time, the two were working on a very difficult question, is the universe conserved?
("Cosmic" is called the cosmic transformation in quantum mechanics, and the transformation of a three-dimensional spatial coordinate system in one dimension))
Wu Jianxiong standing next to the particle accelerator
At that time, the mainstream view of the scientific community was that the universe was conserved, but the research of Li and Yang believed that the universe was actually non-conserved.
In order to verify the conservation state in the electromagnetic interaction and the strong interaction, the two could only find Wu Jianxiong to use the ultra-low temperature laboratory to conduct research.
Wu Jianxiong did not say a word, directly pushed off the honeymoon vacation with her husband, and chose to work in the laboratory.
Finally, under her research, through experiments on cobalt-60 samples, the trajectories of isotopic particles produced by the decay of the β were asymmetrical, thus verifying the theories of Li and Yang.
Cobalt-60 exhibits asymmetry
With the help of Wu Jianxiong, the cosmological non-conservation further promoted the study of modern physics, which is very important for the establishment of the Standard Model.
Li and Yang also won the Nobel Prize later, and Wu Jianxiong was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Physics for many years.
Wu Jianxiong's physics research can be said to have promoted the progress of modern physics in the 20th century.
Later, after the founding of New China, the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States eased, and Wu Jianxiong also returned to China many times to visit and accepted premier Zhou Enlai.
Science has nothing to do with gender
The great professor later retired in 1981 and eventually died on February 16, 1997.
On her tombstone it reads: A forever Chinese.
When one thinks back to this female scientist, one might wonder whether there is a gender bias between men and women in scientific research.
But it turns out that gender is just a noun in scientific research, not an adjective.
Women can be great, and they can achieve great things.