January 15, 1957

achievement

Chien-Shiung Wu Proves Parity Violation

Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu announced experimental proof that nature violates 'conservation of parity,' overturning a basic assumption of physics; her Columbia colleagues Lee and Yang won the Nobel, but Wu-later the first woman to lead the American Physical Society-did not. (Shares Jan 15 with Gary Locke's governorship.)

Sources

  1. physics.aps.org physics.aps.org/story/v22/st19
  2. jcom.sissa.it jcom.sissa.it/article/pubid/JCOM_1603_2017_A10

Also on January 15