On September 22nd, the 99th birthday of mr. Yang Zhenning, a world-renowned physicist, Tsinghua University, the University of Chinese of Hong Kong and the Chinese Physical Society jointly held a grand seminar on academic thought for him - Mr. He Yang's 100th birthday. For a time, he became the focus of people's attention again. Different people have different evaluations of Mr. Yang Zhenning, with mixed praise and criticism, and many bad comments.
Some people say that when New China was in urgent need of cutting-edge talents to develop nuclear weapons, Yang Zhenning "coveted wealth and nobility" and did not return to China with Qian Xuesen, Deng Jiaxian, and other scientists, but chose to stay in the United States, and even later became a "traitor" and became a U.S. citizen. Some say he eats tender grass with old cattle and married a wife who was more than 50 years younger than himself at the age of 82. In 2015, he gave up his American citizenship and changed back to Chinese, which was said to have contributed to the United States when he was young, and returned to China to retire when he was old.
All along, Mr. Yang Zhenning can be said to be scandal-ridden and has suffered a lot of malicious slander. So, what truth is hidden behind his misunderstanding? What significant contributions has he made to the country?
In the eyes of many people, Yang Zhenning's change of nationality when he was young is the most controversial place in his life. The state cultivated him carefully, but in the end he made a wedding dress for others. Including his father, Yang Wuzhi, he did not forgive him in the last days of his life. His actions were in stark contrast to his father's.
In the second year after the end of the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War, Yang Wuzhi was born in Hefei, Anhui. His father was Xiucai of the late Qing Dynasty, who taught in private schools for many years, and later became a document for Duan Zhigui, a famous "pimp" warlord in the late Qing Dynasty. In order to promote officials and get rich and seek private interests, Duan Zhigui often sent beauties to those dignitaries and dignitaries, and used the beauty meter many times. In 1907, Duan Zhigui fell, and Yang Wuzhi's father had to go home. The following year, when he went to Shenyang to look for a job, he unfortunately contracted the plague and died. His mother died in 1905, so Yang Wuzhi was basically raised by his uncle.
Yang Wuzhi is very competitive and has excellent academic performance. In the autumn of 1914, he was admitted to the preparatory department of Beijing Higher Normal School, and a year later entered the undergraduate study of the Department of Mathematics and Science. After graduation, he returned to his alma mater, Anhui Provincial No. 2 Middle School, to teach. In the process, Yang Wuzhi realized that Shusheng could not compete with the corrupt government and local tycoons and inferior gentry, and he had the idea of "saving the country through science" in his mind. So he began to prepare for the study abroad exam. In 1919, he married his fellow countryman Luo Menghua. In 1922, his wife gave birth to her eldest son, Yang Zhenning. During that time, Yang Wuzhi was busy with examinations, and the next year he successfully obtained a publicly-funded study abroad quota, and after bidding farewell to his wife and son, he went to the United States to study number theory and algebra. In 1926, he became the first person in China to obtain a doctorate in the study of number theory. In the autumn of 1928, he returned to his homeland and taught at Xiamen University for a year, before being hired by Tsinghua University as a professor in the Department of Mathematics.
Although his father was not around, Yang Zhenning also accepted good enlightenment. Even though his mother was not highly educated, she taught him to read when he was very young. By the time he was more than 5 years old, he had learned more than 3,000 Chinese characters. After his father returned to China, the family was finally reunited, and his father had a great influence on him. Yang Wuzhi has been engaged in the teaching and research of modern number theory and algebra, and has dedicated his life to mathematics and teaching, and has made many contributions to the development of modern mathematics in China. He is very strict with his children, and at the same time imperceptibly imperceptibly imparts mathematical knowledge to the children. His father's good manners made Yang Zhenning have a strong interest in mathematics, and it also had a great influence on his later research in physics.
Influenced by his father and family environment, Yang Zhenning has been excellent since he was a child. After the outbreak of the "July 7 Incident", Beiping was not safe, and the mother returned to her hometown in Anhui with several children. The following year, because Japan launched a full-scale war of aggression against China, the family fled everywhere and finally came to Kunming. Subsequently, he was admitted to southwest United University, first listening to his father's words to study chemistry, and then changing to physics. In 1941, Deng Jiaxian was also admitted to the school. The two became alumni again, often exchanging professional knowledge together, and their relationship deepened. In 1945, Yang Zhenning was given the opportunity to study abroad at public expense, and was admitted to the Physics Department of the University of Chicago in the United States, where he began to pursue a doctorate.
In 1946, when Deng Jiaxian was admitted to graduate school in the United States, he asked Yang Zhenning's opinion before going to Purdue University to study physics. In the United States, the two often study physics together. Until August 1950, Deng Jiaxian decided to give up the preferential treatment of the United States and return to China to contribute to the nuclear cause of the motherland. Yang Zhenning did not choose to return to China, but chose to stay in the United States and continue to engage in research. He had only one idea: the American environment was more suitable for his own research. Because Yang Zhenning did not return to China when the motherland was in urgent need of a large number of talents, he was criticized by some people as "ungrateful" and "greedy for pleasure".
As early as 1949, when Yang Zhenning entered the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study for postdoctoral research, he met Li Zhengdao, and the two began to cooperate. In 1956, the two jointly published a paper that overturned one of the previous information of the Physics Center, "the representation of cosmic conservation elementary particles and their mirror images is exactly the same", and the two jointly proposed the "cosmological non-conservation theory in weak interactions". With this major discovery, the two won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957.
However, for some unknown reason, former partners blamed each other, saying that the theory was the most creditable to themselves, and the other was only an auxiliary, so the two parted ways. The matter was boiling over, and the negative evaluation of Yang Zhenning by the Chinese people increased a lot. Seven years later, he gave up his Chinese citizenship and became an American citizen, which swept him into the whirlpool of public opinion. Coupled with the tension between China and the United States at that time, he was bitterly criticized by the Chinese people as a "traitor." In 1965, Yang Zhenning was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
In fact, when Yang Zhenning won the Nobel Prize in Physics, Yang Wuzhi was very happy and proud of his son, and at the same time wanted his son to return to China and serve the country. To this end, he took his wife to Geneva to find his eldest son and persuade him to return home. He told Yang Zhenning about the changes in China and told his son that Chinese people have stood up and the country needs him. However, Yang Zhenning did not agree to his father's proposal, replying that he was still young and wanted to learn more things outside, and when the time was ripe, he would return to China. Yang Wuzhi and his wife had to return to China with regrets, and in 1960 and 1962, they went abroad again to find their eldest son and persuade him to return to China, but they failed.
Soon, Yang Zhenning became an American citizen, which made Yang Wuzhi very sad and angry. But he is not a stubborn person, respecting his son's choice, but there is still a knot in his heart. According to Yang Zhenning's later recollection, his father Yang Wuzhi may not have forgiven himself at the last moments of his life.
The reason why Yang Zhenning did not return to China in the 1950s was simple, the Chinese environment was not suitable for him to engage in physics theoretical research. Moreover, at that time, China needed practical talents like Deng Jiaxian and Qian Xuesen, who were engaged in theoretical research, and after returning to China, they were of little use, but it was better to stay in the United States and continue to engage in theoretical research. If he had chosen to return to China at that time, he might not have achieved anything later and would not have won the Nobel Prize. In addition, any research needs to be supported by theory, and it cannot be said that he has not contributed to Chinese physics. Later, after he returned to China, there were hundreds of basic physics research laboratories in China. As for the change of nationality, it is his freedom and rights, and everyone has a different view of right and wrong.
In addition to the fact that Changing nationality has caused Yang Zhenning to be controversial, in 2004, when he was more than 80 years old, he married 28-year-old Weng Fan as a wife, which made him once again pushed to the forefront. In Yang Zhenning's life, there are 3 more important emotional experiences. The first paragraph is when he was 17 years old, he met Zhang Jingchao, a female classmate of the mathematics department, and he also had a good feeling for her, Zhang Jingchao was his first love. But he believes that at his age, he should focus on his studies, and falling in love will affect his future, so he gave up.
After graduating from Southwest United University, Yang Zhenning went to teach in middle school and met Du Zhili, a female student in the class. Du Zhili's father had a lot of ideas, yes, Du Yuming, a senior General of the Kuomintang. Coming from a military family, she received a very strict education from an early age and loved literature and music. Because of her father's relationship, she was quite loved by the old Jiang couple. A year later, Yang Zhenning went to the United States to study, and Du Zhili was admitted to Peking Church University.
The two met again at a Chinese tea garden restaurant in Princeton in 1949. At that time, Du Zhili had grown into a big girl, gentle and beautiful, and she deeply attracted Yang Zhenning. Later, they became lovers. At the end of August 1950, the two married in the United States. After marriage, in order not to disturb her husband's research, Du Zhili took on the responsibility of raising children, and life was a little hard. After Yang Zhenning achieved certain achievements, the conditions at home improved. This teacher-student relationship lasted for 53 years.
In October 2003, Du Zhili died of illness in Princeton. At the end of December 2004, Yang Zhenning married Weng Fan, only a year or two months after Du Zhili's death. As soon as the news came out, many people scolded him for "old cows eating tender grass", and his wife had just died, so he married a new wife. Weng Fan is a graduate student at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, and some people say that she married Yang Zhenning because she coveted his money and reputation, otherwise how could she marry an old man in his 80s. This marriage, some people are not optimistic, of course, there are also people blessing. For Weng Fan, Yang Zhenning described her as "the last gift of God's gift." Even if many people are not optimistic, they are still relatively happy.
Various incidents have caused Yang Zhenning to be haunted by scandals and have suffered a lot of criticism. Putting aside these events, his contribution to China cannot be forgotten.
As we all know, after the founding of New China, it has always been a key target of the United States, and coupled with different political concepts and systems, the relations between the two countries are very tense and basically do not have contact. In the early 1970s, Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou adjusted their diplomatic strategies toward the United States and the Soviet Union, invited the American table tennis team to visit China, and expressed their willingness to engage with the United States and break the deadlock in Sino-US relations. In April 1971, the Us side took the initiative to propose that the Chinese and American high-level dialogue be held, and the Chinese side agreed. On July 9, US National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger paid a secret visit to China. Since then, Sino-US relations have begun to break the ice and slowly develop in a good direction, and the United States has relaxed certain policies.
In the summer of the same year, Yang Zhenning returned to China to visit China, becoming the first person to visit China by a well-known American scholar, and after he arrived in Shanghai, he drew up a list of relatives and friends he wanted to meet, the first of which was Deng Jiaxian. At this time, Deng Jiaxian was being persecuted by some bad people. Those outlaws clamored to destroy the development of nuclear weapons, and many researchers were persecuted by them. One of them, a bomb expert named Qian Jin, who had made great contributions to the nuclear cause, was slandered by them as a spy and tortured. Qian Jin did not admit to the trumped-up charges, and as a result, he was beaten to death by the gang. There were many more examples like this at the time. The young were killed by them, and they began to plague the upper echelons. Deng Jiaxian, as an important member of the scientific research team, was also targeted by them.
The criminals first used their power to transfer Deng Jiaxian out of Beijing and get him to the Qinghai 221 base to facilitate his operation. They then arranged for a group of people to torture him on the grounds that he had "failed to have the desired effect in 2 nuclear tests." At the critical moment, Yang Zhenning wanted to see him and some other scientists, and Premier Zhou took the opportunity to recall him to Beijing, and he escaped the disaster. If it were not for Yang Zhenning, Deng Jiaxian and other nuclear experts would definitely be subjected to more inhuman torture, and the consequences would be unimaginable, and he inadvertently saved many people and made great achievements.
When Academician Deng Jiaxian was found to have rectal cancer, Yang Zhenning returned to China twice to visit his old friends in the hospital. He also used his connections in the United States to find ways to get new drugs for cancer that had not yet been listed, and entrusted people to bring them back to China to treat his friends. It can be seen that the friendship between the two is very deep.
After Yang Zhenning returned to the United States in 1971, he gave speeches in several cities, presenting the real China to Americans and overseas Chinese. As a result, many Americans began to change their attitude toward China, and Chinese American scholars returned to China to visit relatives and friends to provide advice on China's education, science and technology. In 1977, Yang Zhenning and his friends founded the "National Chinese Association", and published an open letter to US President Carter and other articles in the New York Times at their own expense of $8,000, urging China and the United States to establish diplomatic relations. There is no doubt that he has made a lot of efforts to normalize Sino-US relations.
In the same year, Yang Zhenning also participated in the "Fishing Conservation Campaign". Japan wantonly created public opinion, clamoring that "the Diaoyu Islands belong to Japan, and openly provoking and violating China's territorial sovereignty. In 1970, in spite of China's strong opposition, the US Embassy in Japan, in order to help Japan maliciously occupy the Diaoyu Islands, claimed that "the Diaoyu Islands are part of the Ryukyu Islands" and that the US side would "return the Diaoyu Islands and Okinawa to Japan" in 1971. The faceless behavior of the United States and Japan has filled the people of the whole Chinese with indignation, and a large number of overseas students have organized the "Campaign to Defend the Diaoyu Islands.".
At the invitation of patriotic students, Yang Zhenning delivered speeches in many colleges and universities in the United States, elaborating in detail from the aspects of history and geography that the Diaoyu Islands have been an inseparable part of China's territory since ancient times, and resolutely supporting China's maintenance of territorial sovereignty. He was known as a "spiritual teacher" in the "Fishing Protection Movement", which influenced many students from Taiwan Province of China, made many patriotic young people determined to serve the motherland, and made great contributions to safeguarding China's territorial integrity.
In terms of education, Yang Zhenning's contribution is not small. In 1974, when he returned to Shanghai to visit relatives, he reached a cooperation with more than 10 teachers at Fudan University, and promoted the signing of an exchange agreement between the State University of New York at Stony Brook and the university. The following year, he also suggested that Premier Zhou strengthen the work of popularizing science among the masses. In 1978, the University of Science and Technology of China, under the initiative of Yang Zhenning, Li Zhengdao and others, created a junior class to better discover and cultivate talents. In 1980, he initiated the establishment of the "China Academic Exchange Committee" to subsidize Chinese students to study at Stony Brook For one year. Before and after, 80 scholars went to the United States to exchange and study, and most of them returned to China. In 1983, Yang Zhenning initiated the establishment of the "Sun Yat-sen University Advanced Academic Research Center Foundation", which funded hundreds of basic research projects.
In 1986, Yang Zhenning advocated the establishment of the "Chen Jiageng Youth Invention Award" to encourage young people to think more and invent more economically valuable products for the country. In 1997, he became the director of the Center for Advanced Studies at Tsinghua University, where he helped introduce many top talents. In order to help Tsinghua's education cause, he went around seeking investment and promoting exchanges and cooperation between Tsinghua University and the United States in education, science and technology. In addition, Yang Zhenning also donated more than 2 million US dollars in salaries paid to him by Tsinghua to the school, helping Tsinghua become a world-class university as soon as possible. On May 14 this year, in order to support Tsinghua University's talent training, cultural inheritance, teaching and scientific research, he decided to donate more than 2,000 pieces of video materials from his office and reference room, correspondence, books, calligraphy and paintings, and manuscripts of articles, totaling more than 2,000 pieces.
Nie Huatong, former dean of the Institute for Advanced Study at Tsinghua University, commented on Mr. Yang Zhenning and said that he is a person who has remembered the fundamentals and has a very deep affection for China. His patriotism, love to the bone. For many years, he has been concerned about whether the lives of Chinese people have improved, whether China's science and technology have developed in the right direction, what deficiencies still exist in China's talent training, and what else can he do for China. Those Chinese in the United States, Mr. Yang also tried his best to help them. Dean Nie Huatong deeply felt his affection for China's flesh and blood, which is thicker than water. Many scholars believe that Mr. Yang Zhenning has been using his own way to love the country and contribute to the motherland.
Many people have a deep misunderstanding of Mr. Yang Zhenning and are prejudiced against him. When evaluating a person, we should not only look at his negative things, but also look at his positive energy side and look at him from an objective point of view.
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