Nai-Chang Yeh (; born 1961) is a

Taiwanese-American Taiwanese Americans () are Americans who carry full or partial ancestry from Taiwan. This includes American-born citizens who descend from migrants from Taiwan. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, 49% of Taiwanese Americans lived in the state of Califo ...

physicist specializing in experimental

condensed matter physics Condensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic and microscopic physical properties of matter, especially the solid and liquid phases which arise from electromagnetic forces between atoms. More generally, the sub ...

Early life and education

She was born and grew up in Chiayi,

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

and received her B. Sc. from National Taiwan University in the capital

Taipei City Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the Capital city, capital and a Special municipality (Taiwan), special municipality of the Taiwan, Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Regions of Taiwan, Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of t ...

in 1983. She went to the US for graduate education and obtained her Ph.D. in physics in 1988 from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

. In a personal statement on her life and career, Yeh has described her childhood intellectual and artistic curiosity leading her to excel academically. She credits her mother, a mathematics professor, and her Ph.D. supervisor Professor Mildred Dresselhaus as role models who helped to give her confidence in her ability to succeed in physics.

Career and research

Her research emphasis is the fundamental physical properties of strongly correlated electronic systems. She is best known for her work on a variety of superconductors,

magnetic materials A magnet is a material or object that produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field is invisible but is responsible for the most notable property of a magnet: a force that pulls on other ferromagnetic materials, such as iron, steel, nickel, ...

, and superconductor/ferromagnet heterostructures. She is also interested in the physics and applications of low-dimensional electronic systems such as graphene and carbon nanotubes. She contributed to the development of a faster technique to produce high-quality graphene. Her experimental techniques include development of various cryogenic scanning probe microscopes for applications to nano-science and technology, as well as superconducting resonator technologies that have been applied to high-resolution studies of superfluid phase transitions and

Bose–Einstein condensation Bose–Einstein may refer to: * Bose–Einstein condensate ** Bose–Einstein condensation (network theory) * Bose–Einstein correlations * Bose–Einstein statistics In quantum statistics, Bose–Einstein statistics (B–E statistics) describe ...

in helium gas. She also works on exploring properties of topological insulators. She is Professor of

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

and the Fletcher Jones Foundation Co-Director of the Kavli Nanoscience Institute at the California Institute of Technology. Yeh was the first female professor in that department when she joined in 1989. She is also part of the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Matter.

Awards and recognition

She has been recognized by a number of professional associations: *Fellow,

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

; *Fellow,

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

; *Fellow and Chartered Physicist, The

Institute of Physics The Institute of Physics (IOP) is a UK-based learned society and professional body that works to advance physics education, research and application. It was founded in 1874 and has a worldwide membership of over 20,000. The IOP is the Physica ...

, UK; *David and Lucile Packard Fellow for Science and Engineering; *

Sloan Research Fellow The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

She was lauded in ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' magazine on Nov. 18, 1991, as a scientific "rising star" in California.''Time Magazine'' "Galaxy of Stars" in Special Issue on California, Vol. 138 #20, P.73, Nov 18, 1991. She is cited in the

American Men and Women of Science ''American Men and Women of Science'' (the 40th edition was published in 2022) is a biographical reference work on leading scientists in the United States and Canada, published as a series of books and online by Gale. The first edition was publish ...

References

葉乃裳教授專訪 (Interview with Professor Yeh Nai-Chang)
(2007-9-1), Department of Physics, National Taiwan University, 2008

External links

California Institute of Technology faculty page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yeh, Nai-Chang American people of Taiwanese descent American people of Chinese descent American women physicists Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Living people 1961 births Taiwanese women physicists 21st-century American physicists People from Chiayi National Taiwan University alumni MIT Department of Physics alumni Fellows of the American Physical Society Sloan Research Fellows California Institute of Technology faculty American women academics 21st-century American women scientists