RIP Tsung-Dao Lee (1926-2024), Nobel 1957

[robphy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/science/tsung-dao-lee-dead.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsung-Dao_Lee

https://president.columbia.edu/news/president-shafiks-statement-passing-tsung-dao-lee

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https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1957/lee/facts/ (T.D. Lee was 30 years old.)
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1957/lee/lecture/

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1957/lee/interview/ (VIDEO)
Interview with the 1957 Nobel Laureate in Physics, Tsung-Dao Lee, 9 December 2007.

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(CERN, 2007) Interview with Professor Tsung-Dao Lee,
Nobel Laureate in Physics (1957) and University Professor, Columbia University, New York, USA
https://videos.cern.ch/record/1157057
https://videos.cern.ch/video/CERN-FOOTAGE-2007-049-001

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T.D. Lee's view on neutrinos.

• https://www.ias.edu/sns/Tsung_Dao_Lee
  https://www.ias.edu/scholars/tsung-dao-lee
  
  
• https://www.columbia.edu/cu/physics/fac-bios/Lee_TD/faculty.html
  https://www.columbia.edu/cu/physics/pdf-files/TDLeeBiographicalSketch.pdf
  
  
• dissertation: https://catalog.lib.uchicago.edu/vufind/Record/4507481
  Hydrogen Content and Energy-Productive Mechanism of White Dwarfs.
  Astrophysical Journal, vol. 111, p.625 (May 1950)
  https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/link_gateway/1950ApJ...111..625L/doi:10.1086/145306
  
  
• Astrophysics Data System (ads) database of publications of T.D. Lee (sorted by citations)
• https://www.genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/id.php?id=105785
  https://academictree.org/physics/tree.php?pid=66185

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Tsung-Dao Lee won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics with Chen-Ning Yang (his classmate at U. Chicago where they were graduate students*),
"for their penetrating investigation of the so-called parity laws which has led to important discoveries regarding the elementary particles".
(Chien-Shiung Wu should probably have also shared that prize https://physicsworld.com/a/overlooked-for-the-nobel-chien-shiung-wu .)

* http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/951012/chandra.shtml
"One story in particular illustrates Chandrasekhar's devotion to his science and his students. In the 1940s, while he was based at the University's Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wis., he drove more than 100 miles round-trip each week to teach a class of just two registered students. Any concern about the cost-effectiveness of such a commitment was erased in 1957, when the entire class -- T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang -- won the Nobel Prize in physics."

 

[berkeman]

Tsung-Dao Lee won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics

Wow, he was only 31 years old then!

 

[robphy]

https://www.aps.org/apsnews/2022/09/lee-yang-parity
APS NEWS | THIS MONTH IN PHYSICS HISTORY

October 1956: Lee and Yang Crack the Mirror of Parity
Until the pair’s explosive paper, physicists assumed that particles would act the same when mirrored.​

Physicists Chen-Ning Yang (left) and Tsung-Dao Lee, whose 1956 paper on parity violation earned them the Nobel Prize.
University of Chicago Photographic Archive (apf1-03706) / Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center
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In a landmark experiment, Chien-Shiung Wu showed that physics sometimes violated parity, proving Lee and Yang’s theory. Despite her instrumental role, Wu never received the Nobel Prize for her work—though Lee and Yang did.
Smithsonian Institution Archives

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Question of Parity Conservation in Weak Interactions
T. D. Lee and C. N. Yang
Phys. Rev. 104, 254 – Published 1 October 1956; Erratum Phys. Rev. 106, 1371 (1957)​

https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.104.254

 

[Vanadium 50]

Despite her instrumental role, Wu never received the Nobel Prize for her work

A case of not telling the whole story, because the whole story doesn't fit the narrative. In that same issue, arriving the same day, there is also a paper by Garwin and Lederman showing parity violation in a different measurement. And two days later came in a third paper by Telegdi and Friedman. (published in a following issue).

Essentially, there was simultaneous confirmation by three different groups using three different techniques, all three of which were suggested by Lee and Yang. But that's not as good a story.

 

[robphy]

A case of not telling the whole story, because the whole story doesn't fit the narrative. In that same issue, arriving the same day, there is also a paper by Garwin and Lederman showing parity violation in a different measurement. And two days later came in a third paper by Telegdi and Friiedman. (published in a following issue).

Essentially, there was simultaneous confirmation by three different groups using three different techniques, all three of which were suggested by Lee and Yang. But that's not as good a story.

I don't know the history and possible politics involved...
but here are what seem to be relevant quotes from these papers.

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https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.104.254
Question of Parity Conservation in Weak Interactions
T. D. Lee and C. N. Yang
Phys. Rev. 104, 254 – Published 1 October 1956; (Received 22 June 1956)
Erratum Phys. Rev. 106, 1371 (1957)

The authors wish to thank M. Goldhaber, J. R. Oppenheimer, J. Steinberger, and C. S. Wu for interesting discussions and comments. They also wish to thank R. Oehme for an interesting communication

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https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.105.1413
Experimental Test of Parity Conservation in Beta Decay
C. S. Wu, E. Ambler, R. W. Hayward, D. D. Hoppes, and R. P. Hudson
Phys. Rev. 105, 1413 – Published 15 February 1957 (Received 15 January 1957)

The inspiring discussions held with Professor T. D.Lee and Professor C. N. Yang by one of us (C. S. Wu) are gratefully acknowledged.

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https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.105.1415
Observations of the Failure of Conservation of Parity and Charge Conjugation in Meson Decays: the Magnetic Moment of the Free Muon
Richard L. Garwin, Leon M. Lederman, and Marcel Weinrich
Phys. Rev. 105, 1415 – Published 15 February 1957 (Received 15 January 1957)

... Confirmation of this proposal in the form of preliminary results on β decay of oriented nuclei by Wu et al reached us before this experiment was begun. (cite ref 6)

The authors wish to acknowledge the essential role of Professor Tsung-Dao Lee in clarifying for us the papers
of Lee and Yang. We are also indebted to Professor C. S. Wu(cite ref 6) for reports of her preliminary results in the Co^{60} experiment which played a crucial part in the Columbia discussions immediately preceding this experiment.

(ref 6) Wu, Ambler, Hudson, Hoppes, and Hayward, Phys. Rev. 105, 1413 (1957), preceding Letter.

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https://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.105.1681.2
Nuclear Emulsion Evidence for Parity Nonconservation in the Decay Chain 𝜋+−𝜇+−𝑒+
Jerome I. Friedman and V. L. Telegdi
Phys. Rev. 105, 1681 – Published 1 March 1957 (Received 17 January 1957)

... This effect agrees in sign and magnitude with one observed in a recent analogous experiment (cite ref 5) performed electronically at Columbia University.

...We would like to thank the Columbia workers, in particular R. L. Garwin, for communicating their unpublished
results to us. ...

(endnote) For technical reasons, this Letter could not be published in the same issue as that of Garwin, Lederman, and Weinrich, Phys. Rev. 105, 1415 (1957).

(ref 5) Garwin, Lederman, and Weinrich (private communication from R. L. Garwin, January 13, 1957).

 

[yungman]

What? Quantum Mechanics make both of them live so long? The other one is still alive at 100!! I remember I heard about them when I was a kid.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Thanks for posting that. You have 10 experimeters there - who gets the prize? And these guys are no slouches: two went on to win Nobels for other things.

It is also important to recognize that Lee and Yang didn't work in a vacuum. They were trying to explain an experimental fact, the so-called τ-θ problem. In that sense, the Wu result was the 2nd measurement. There was also a result by Steinberger and Schwartz (also Nobelists) on angular distributions of hyperon decays. That result had too few events to be significant. (And some bad luck - their central result was in between parity conservation and the SM.)

 

[robphy]

https://www.nist.gov/video/nist-colloquium-new-insights-old-problems-nobel-laureate-td-lee
NIST Colloquium: New Insights into Old Problems, by Nobel Laureate T.D. Lee

This talk was recorded December 2, 2005, on the cusp of the 50th anniversary of the measurement of the non-conservation of parity in the beta decay of Co(60). The measurement was made at NIST (then the National Bureau of Standards) on December 27, 1956, and confirmed a theory advanced earlier that year by T.D. Lee and C.N. Yang, theorists at Columbia University. T.D. Lee received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for his investigations of parity laws. In this talk sponsored by the NIST Standards Alumni Association, T. D. Lee discusses the importance of symmetry principles, the impact of the parity discovery on later research, and some of his recent research. Members of the 1956 NBS research team also recount their experiences.

Uploaded On February 9, 2018

Start at about 14m00s