Chinese Nobel Prize-winning physicist Chen Ning Yang dies

The prestigious Tsinghua University, where he studied and served as a professor, said in a statement that Yang died of an illness, without sharing further details.

“Professor Yang is one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, having made revolutionary contributions to the development of modern physics,” the statement said, praising his contribution to China’s scientific and educational developments.

Yang won the Nobel Prize in 1957 with Tsung-Dao Lee for their investigation of the so-called parity laws that led to “important discoveries regarding the elementary particles,” according to the Nobel Prize website. They were the first Chinese-born Nobel Prize winners in physics.

In his speech at the Nobel Banquet at the time, he said he was as proud of his Chinese heritage as he was devoted to modern science, a part of human civilization of Western origin.

“I am heavy with an awareness of the fact that I am in more than one sense a product of both the Chinese and Western cultures, in harmony and in conflict,” according to his speech, shared on the Nobel Prize website.

Yang, also known as Frank or Franklin, was also famous for his Yang-Mills theory developed with American physicist Robert Mills.

Born in 1922, Yang was brought up surrounded by the Tsinghua campus, where his father was a math professor, the website said. After finishing his undergraduate degree, he obtained his master’s degree from Tsinghua.