New USPS Stamp Celebrates Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, The ‘First Lady’ Of Physics
“After her historical work on parity violation, Wu continued a remarkable career. She experimentally confirmed the Conserved Vector Current hypothesis; she proved that the charge conjugation © symmetry was also violated in the weak interactions; she was the first to experimentally obtain results from experiments involving entangled photons as related to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox.
Wu also was an activist against sexism in physics, only obtaining equal pay to her male counterparts in 1975 and often was mis-addressed as “Professor Yuan,” her husband’s name, which she always corrected by informing them that she was Professor Wu. At one point, in a symposium at MIT, she asked the audience, “I wonder whether the tiny atoms and nuclei, or the mathematical symbols, or the DNA molecules, have any preference for either masculine or feminine treatment?”
Had Wu been justly awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957 along with Lee and Yang, she would have been only the second woman at the time to win the award, following Marie Curie. While it’s too late to right that wrong, we can now celebrate her life, her work, and her legacy every time we send a letter through the United States Postal Service. May we all wish a posthumous congratulations to Chien-Shiung Wu: the First Lady of Physics.”
The first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics was Marie Curie. The second wasn’t, but should have been, Chien-Shiung Wu. Today, the USPS honors her with her own stamp, but she deserves (and deserved) so much more.
Come learn about her most important, groundbreaking work for yourself, and see if you don’t agree!
