HomeDate: 2025-10-18
Academician Chen-Ning Yang passed away on October 18, 2025, at the age of 103.
Academician Yang was an internationally renowned giant in physics whose pioneering contributions spanned particle physics, statistical mechanics, quantum field theory, and condensed matter physics. Together with Robert Mills he formulated the Yang–Mills gauge theory, one of the century’s most important achievements in physics that underpins the Standard Model of particle physics; and together with Tsung-Dao Lee he proposed the nonconservation of parity in weak interactions, a discovery that revolutionized scientists’ understanding of symmetry and earned them the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics. Yang also introduced the Yang–Baxter equation, opening new directions in statistical physics and mathematical physics.
Dr. Yang received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1948. He served for many years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he founded the university’s Institute for Theoretical Physics (now the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics). He maintained frequent exchanges with Taiwan’s academic community, first attending an Academia Sinica convocation as an Academician in 1986 and made multiple subsequent visits that had a lasting influence on the development of physics in Taiwan.
Dr. Yang devoted his life to scientific research and education; his outstanding scholarship and dedication to the pursuit of knowledge will be remembered as an enduring example. He received many honors, including the Nobel Prize in Physics (1957), the U.S. National Medal of Science (1986), the Benjamin Franklin Medal (1993), the Bower Award (1994), the Lars Onsager Prize (1999), and the King Faisal International Prize (2001). He was elected Academician of Academia Sinica in 1958.
