"The autumn wind blows endlessly, and it is always jade care."
From ancient times to the present, the feelings of home and country are the deep feelings flowing in the blood of Chinese, which affects the lonely hearts of wanderers who are in detention. In modern times, countless scholars who have gone abroad to study have always been concerned about distant motherlands in foreign countries.
In that beautiful and poetic Suzhou, there is a legendary female scientist who built atomic bombs for the United States and spent her life wandering on the other side of the ocean. In the end, she chose to return to Suzhou after her death at the age of 85, and her tombstone reads: A permanent Chinese.
She is Wu Jianxiong.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="5" > can wear a cheongsam and work on atomic bombs</h1>
When it comes to Gusu women, most people think of the gentle Jiangnan bridesmaids, who wear classical cheongsam, hold antique books in their hands, walk and chant in the garden and bluestone slab road, sing low, and are literary and feminine.
Here was also born a legendary female scientist known as the "Curie of the East" - Wu Jianxiong.
At first glance at Wu Jianxiong's name, many people will think that she is a man, which is also the good intention of her father Wu Zhongyi. As a well-known family in Jiangsu and an enlightened gentleman with a Western-style education, Wu Zhongyi advocated equality between men and women, and treated his children equally.
It is precisely for this reason that he gave his second daughter Wu Jianxiong a "boy's name", hoping that she would not be bound by gender, self-improvement, and Ji Jian would become a male. He attached great importance to his daughter's education, so that Wu Jianxiong went to school like his sons from an early age.
Wu Jianxiong also lived up to her parents' expectations, she was talented and knowledgeable. What is even more gratifying is that Wu Jianxiong has shown extraordinary mathematical talents since she was a child, and she is more willing to immerse herself in the world of mathematics and physics than the romantic poetry and book lile.
Seeing that his daughter was so successful, his father was very pleased and strongly supported her in choosing her beloved science for further study. In terms of study, Wu Jianxiong studied hard and did not let go of every question, she read the deeds of the famous female scientist Marie Curie in the books and newspapers, and looked forward to becoming the second Marie Curie.
At the age of 22, Wu Jianxiong was officially transferred from the Department of Mathematics of Central University to the Department of Physics. There, she met a mentor who had changed her life, Shi Shiyuan, Marie Curie's mentor.
Under his careful tutelage, Wu Jianxiong's academic level improved greatly, and after publishing a thesis entitled "Proof of Prague's Law", he successfully graduated with a bachelor's degree. After graduation, Wu Jianxiong entered the Academia Sinica and embarked on the road of scientific research.
Wu Jianxiong, who was in his prime at this time, was a special presence in Jiangnan Water Town. Her body has both feminine gentleness and male fortitude, and she loves rose flowers very much, but no one can imagine that she can wear a cheongsam and indulge in flowers, and she can also build atomic bombs in the laboratory.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="15" > "Marie Curie" in the East</h1>
In 1936, the domestic political situation was turbulent, the Nationalist government headed by Chiang Kai-shek continued to promote the White Terror, and the Japanese Kwantung Army, which was entrenched in northeast China, also began to stir.
The perceptive Wu Jianxiong had a premonition that war was coming, and the conditions of the laboratory could not satisfy her pursuit of truth. So, before the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, she went to the University of California, Berkeley for further study, under the tutelage of Ernest Lawrence, Oppenheimer and other physics giants.
Even if you are on the other side of the distant ocean, sitting in a study, you are conditioned to pursue scholarship without distraction. But Wu Jianxiong's love for her hometown and motherland in her bones makes it difficult for her to ignore the suffering of the motherland.
War made her understand that human beings need powerful weapons to build deterrence and maintain peace, especially the poor and weak motherland, and more importantly, strong military forces to protect themselves. Therefore, she made nuclear physics the research direction of her life, hoping that her research results could serve the country.
She did. In 1939, under the guidance of her mentor Segerry, she conducted an experiment on the splitting of uranium atomic nuclei, which directly contributed to the "Manhattan Project" of the United States on the development of atomic bombs.
Wu Jianxiong also rose to prominence as a talent that the U.S. government painstakingly acquired, and after graduating with a Ph.D. in physics, she was hired by Princeton University as a lecturer in the Department of Physics.
At this time, at the age of 28, her doctoral dissertation had been published in the top journals of the academic world, and Princeton's generous treatment also gave her a quiet and rich life, and her future was bright. Soon after, she married Yuan Jialuo, who was also a physicist, and she was very affectionate.
In the United States, Wu Jianxiong's scientific research talent has been maximized: she participated in the "Manhattan Project", was hired as a fellow and president of the American Physical Society, served as a professor at Columbia University, proved that the universe is not conserved, and was known as the "Curie of the East".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="24" > did not win the Nobel Prize, and regret it for life</h1>
On January 15, 1957, a groundbreaking paper was sent to the editorial board of the journal Physical Review. The reviewers were ecstatic to briefly glance at its contents and immediately informed Columbia University, where the author of the paper worked, the next day, that they had a press conference for it.
What is the magic of this paper that makes these leading figures in the physics community crazy and hold press conferences for the first time in history? It turned out that this paper was not trivial, it recorded a scientific achievement that could go down in history and win the Nobel Prize.
It is Wu Jianxiong's well-known research results - using β decay experiments to prove the law of cosmological non-conservation under weak interactions, and the law of conservation of nuclear β decay in vector flow.
As we all know, in 1956, two scientists, Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao, proposed the hypothesis that the cosmology may not be conserved in the decay of β. The one who began to test their hypothesis with experiments was Wu Jianxiong, who was 44 years old at the time.
In scientific research, Wu Jianxiong has always been a "practical school", she advocates "bold hypothesis, careful verification", and strives to use rigorous experimental process, accurate experimental results, and strong scientific evidence to support any possible hypothesis.
She had previously specialized in β decay for many years and was recognized as an authority in the academic community. To this end, she has worked so hard that she has personally gone down to an abandoned 600-meter-deep salt mine in Cleveland to carry out experiments to eliminate experimental interference.
The kung fu paid off, and this time she finally succeeded. This remarkable achievement was enough to get the Nobel Prize "toward" her and her research team. However, in the end, the Nobel Prize fell to Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao, and Wu Jianxiong was forgotten.
In the face of such a result, the academic circles are full of discussions, and all kinds of speculations have poured in. Some people complained about Wu Jianxiong, some people suspected that the organizing committee had gender discrimination in the process of selecting the winners, and some people questioned that the Nobel Prize was deliberately ignoring the achievements of Chinese scientists.
In this regard, Wu Jianxiong showed a good demeanor. She told her colleagues that she was not engaged in research to win awards, so she did not care that she did not win the Nobel Prize.
This is the regret of female scientists after all. In a correspondence with fellow physicist and Nobel laureate in physics, Wu Jianxiong revealed his regrets: "When my research was deliberately ignored for some reason, it still hurt me deeply. ”
Wu's achievements were not overlooked because she did not win the Nobel Prize: in 1978, she won the Wolf Prize in Israel and was elected a member of the Chinese-American National Academy of Sciences, the first time the U.S. government has awarded such an honor to a Chinese scientist.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="36" > deeply loved the motherland and returned home</h1>
In 1982, professor Wu, who was 70 years old at the time, finally returned to his hometown after a long absence. Previously, due to the obstruction of the Cold War situation, the scientific research career in the United States, as well as the care of the family and the raising of young children, there has been no opportunity to return home.
"The little boy left home and returned to the old man, and the township tone did not change the sideburns." Only this Tang poem can depict the feelings of Wu Jianxiong, who has re-embarked on the land of China after many years.
The motherland also welcomed the wandering wanderer with open arms, and she was appointed honorary professor of Nanjing University, Peking University and the University of Science and Technology of China, and also served as a member of the academic committee of the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Back in the jiangnan water town where he was born, Wu Jianxiong wanted to go to his alma mater to see. At that time, the Central University had been changed to Nanjing University, and fortunately, his mentor Shi Shiyuan was still alive. She went to visit her mentor at her alma mater, and the two of them reunited, and a taste was in her heart.
As a former teacher, Wu Jianxiong is also willing to pass on all his life's learning to the students of the motherland. She gave a lecture on the non-conservation of cosmology at Nanjing University, hoping to contribute knowledge and strength to the construction of the new era of the motherland and cultivate a new generation of national pillars.
Wu Jianxiong's nickname is Wei Wei. "Wei" is a plant that has been the object of the literati's chanting since ancient times. "Tsevi Tsevi, Wei also stops", in the Book of Poetry, Wei symbolizes the thoughts of the scholar's homeland.
As flowers and trees, "purple violet" and "rose" are extremely tenacious in vitality, growing toward the sun, with thorny branches, soft on the outside and rigid on the inside. This is also like the character of Professor Wu Jianxiong, who is immersed in research and indomitable.
When she returned to her alma mater, Matilda School, Wu Jianxiong attended the inauguration ceremony of her alma mater Matilda Building, and when she saw that the teaching building of her alma mater was in disrepair and slightly dilapidated, she donated a Ziwei Building named after her nickname "Wei".
In honor of this famous alumnus, Matilda School also named the Science and Technology Building "Wu Jianxiong Building". In 1990, the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences also named the asteroid with the international number 2752 "Wu Jianxiong Star".
The winter of 1997 was extremely cold for the elderly Professor Wu Jianxiong. In her illness, what she can't forget is the fallen leaves returning to the roots. She instructed her husband, who was waiting at the bedside, to bury her in Taicang, Suzhou, where she grew up by the Liu River if she could not survive this time.
Soon after, on February 16, she passed away. In accordance with her last wishes, her husband Yuan Jialuo personally escorted her ashes back to China for burial. From now on, the waves of the Liuhe River will forever be buried here with the "female Haojie" of physics.
On her tombstone, there is only one sentence inscribed: an eternal Chinese.
Today, Professor Wu Jianxiong has been dead for many years, and her beautiful shadow can no longer be found in the rose bushes. The laws of the universe she revealed still exist in the human world, and the "Wu Jianxiong Star" in the sky is still shining silently, and we will always remember her patriotic feelings and outstanding contributions.