On September 4, 2015, the High Energy Theory Research Group of Harvard University released a remarkable news: "Yin Xi has been promoted to full professor, warm congratulations!" The message was accompanied by a photo of Yoon Hee wearing a green T-shirt with hair falling to his shoulders, his typically Asian face apparently unable to hide the fact that he already had American citizenship. Born in Beijing in December 1983, Yin Xi has shown amazing mathematical talent since childhood. At the age of 8, he began to teach himself calculus and quantum mechanics, and in 1996, he was admitted to the "junior class" of the University of Science and Technology of China.
This "junior class" is specially set up for talented children like Yin Xi, who is the youngest but his intelligence is unmatched. He never needed to take notes and could remember everything in one lecture. He scored above 90 points in every exam and received a scholarship every year. At that time, the professors of the University of Science and Technology of China had high expectations for him, and Yin Xi himself had great ambitions to serve the motherland and his alma mater. In 2001, he successfully completed his five-year undergraduate studies at the University of Science and Technology of China and was also admitted to Harvard University.
However, in 2006, Yin Xi successfully received a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University. As he prepared to return home, Harvard University made an attractive offer. Until then, Harvard practice had been that doctoral graduates were not allowed to pursue postdoctoral research on campus. This tradition is 300 years old and has never been broken. But for Yin's sake, Harvard University made a compromise and allowed him to continue his postdoctoral studies on campus as long as he remained in the United States. This opportunity is really rare, Yin Xi did not hesitate to give up the plan to return to China, choosing to stay at Harvard to continue in-depth research.
His research interests include esoteric areas such as string theory, black hole entropy in quantum gravity, and supersymmetric bound states in string theory. Although these fields seemed comfortable for him, it was because of this that he quickly became favored by Harvard University. In 2008, he was appointed as an assistant professor and seven years later promoted to full professor.
In July 2013, Yin Xi briefly returned to China. By then, he had become a U.S. citizen and started a family with an American woman. However, his alma mater, USTC, invited him to return to China to teach summer courses for undergraduate and graduate students, so he returned to China for a few months. During this period, the high-profile Yin Xi gave a television interview. When asked why he didn't return home to develop, he was silent for a moment and then said: "Science knows no borders. He believes that his work needs to be carried out in a place with great partners and first-class physicists. If he decides to return home, he will need to return home with a team of physicists, not alone. This answer has caused a lot of controversy.
French scientist Pasteur once said that although science has no borders, scholars still have their own homeland. However, Yin Xi's ideas are very different from Pasteur's. In his opinion, only at Harvard can he truly realize his value. Everyone has their own life pursuits, we have no right to interfere with the ideas and views of others, we can only wish Yin Xi to continue to achieve brilliant achievements in the field of science and contribute to the scientific cause of all mankind.