Tai Tsun Wu (, September 1, 1933) is a Chinese-born American physicist and applied physicist well known for his contributions to

high-energy nuclear physics High-energy nuclear physics studies the behavior of nuclear matter in energy regimes typical of high-energy physics. The primary focus of this field is the study of heavy-ion collisions, as compared to lighter atoms in other particle accelerat ...

and statistical mechanics. Born in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

, he studied electrical engineering at

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

and became a

William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, often abbreviated to Putnam Competition, is an annual mathematics competition for undergraduate college students enrolled at institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada (regard ...

fellow (1953). He obtained an S.M. (1954) and

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

(1956) in

applied physics Applied physics is the application of physics to solve scientific or engineering problems. It is usually considered to be a bridge or a connection between physics and engineering. "Applied" is distinguished from "pure" by a subtle combination ...

from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

. His thesis concerned '' I. The Concept of Impedance II. High Frequency Scattering'' and was advised by Ronold W. P. King. At Harvard, he continued as Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows (1956–59), joined the faculty of applied physics (1959) and is currently the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics & Professor of Physics. Wu has also had visiting appointments with

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a Private university, private Medical research, biomedical Research university, research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York (state), New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medica ...

(1966), at the

DESY The Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (English ''German Electron Synchrotron''), commonly referred to by the abbreviation DESY, is a national research center in Germany. It operates particle accelerators used to investigate the structure of matt ...

in Hamburg, Germany (1971), at CERN in

Geneva, Switzerland Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; rm, Genevra is the second-most populous city in Switzerland (after Zürich) and the most populous city of Romandy, the French-speaking part of Switzerland. Situ ...

and

Utrecht University Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollm ...

(1977). He has studied statistical mechanics on

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) describ ...

in an external potential, classical

electromagnetic theory In physics, electromagnetism is an interaction that occurs between particles with electric charge. It is the second-strongest of the four fundamental interactions, after the strong force, and it is the dominant force in the interactions ...

(1960). With

Hung Cheng Hung Cheng (; born March 2, 1937), also known as Hong Zheng, is an American professor of applied mathematics at MIT. Education Cheng received his B.Sc and the Ph.D. degrees from the California Institute of Technology, in 1959 and 1961. He had ...

, he used gauge

quantum field theory In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity, and quantum mechanics. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles a ...

to predict the unboundedly increasing total scattering cross sections at very high energies, experimentally verified at CERN and Tevatron collider. Wu studied production processes for the

Large Hadron Collider The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider. It was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) between 1998 and 2008 in collaboration with over 10,000 scientists and hundr ...

, in particular to predict the production cross section of a

Higgs particle The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the Standa ...

with low momentum together with two forward jets. His studies with

Chen Ning Yang Yang Chen-Ning or Chen-Ning Yang (; born 1 October 1922), also known as C. N. Yang or by the English name Frank Yang, is a Chinese theoretical physicist who made significant contributions to statistical mechanics, integrable systems, gauge th ...

include

CP violation In particle physics, CP violation is a violation of CP-symmetry (or charge conjugation parity symmetry): the combination of C-symmetry ( charge symmetry) and P-symmetry (parity symmetry). CP-symmetry states that the laws of physics should be t ...

and globalization of the gauge theory. More recently, Wu has studied

quantum information processing Quantum information science is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to understand the analysis, processing, and transmission of information using quantum mechanics principles. It combines the study of Information science with quantum effects in p ...

based on the

Schrödinger equation The Schrödinger equation is a linear partial differential equation that governs the wave function of a quantum-mechanical system. It is a key result in quantum mechanics, and its discovery was a significant landmark in the development of th ...

without any spatial dimension in the modeling and application of quantum memories.

Honours & Awards

* Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, ...

, 1977 * Academician of

Academia Sinica Academia Sinica (AS, la, 1=Academia Sinica, 3=Chinese Academy; ), headquartered in Nangang, Taipei, is the national academy of Taiwan. Founded in Nanking, the academy supports research activities in a wide variety of disciplines, ranging from ...

, Taiwan, 1980 *

The Humboldt Prize The Humboldt Prize, the Humboldt-Forschungspreis in German, also known as the Humboldt Research Award, is an award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany to internationally renowned scientists and scholars who work outside of G ...

, 1985 *

Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics is an award given each year since 1959 jointly by the American Physical Society and American Institute of Physics. It is established by the Heineman Foundation in honour of Dannie Heineman. As of 2 ...

with Barry M. McCoy and

Alexander Zamolodchikov Alexander Borisovich Zamolodchikov (russian: Алекса́ндр Бори́сович Замоло́дчиков; born September 18, 1952) is a Russian physicist, known for his contributions to condensed matter physics, two-dimensional conforma ...

, 1999

Books

*''The Scattering and Diffraction of Waves'' (Harvard University Press, 1959). With Ronold W. P. King. *''The two-dimensional

Ising model The Ising model () (or Lenz-Ising model or Ising-Lenz model), named after the physicists Ernst Ising and Wilhelm Lenz, is a mathematical model of ferromagnetism in statistical mechanics. The model consists of discrete variables that represent ...

'' (Harvard University Press, 1973). With Barry M. McCoy *''Expanding Protons: Scattering at High Energies'' (MIT Press, 1987). With

*''The Ubiquitous

Photon A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are Massless particle, massless ...

: Helicity Methods for QED and

QCD In theoretical physics, quantum chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory of the strong interaction between quarks mediated by gluons. Quarks are fundamental particles that make up composite hadrons such as the proton, neutron and pion. QCD is a type ...

'' (Oxford University Press, 1990). With Raymond Gastmans *''Lateral Electromagnetic Waves: Theory and Applications to Communications, Geophysical Exploration, and Remote Sensing'' (Springer-Verlag, 1992). With Ronold W. P. King and Margaret Owens

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wu, Tai Tsun 1933 births Living people American nuclear physicists People associated with CERN Chinese nuclear physicists University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering alumni Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni Harvard University faculty Chinese emigrants to the United States Writers from Shanghai Educators from Shanghai Chinese science writers Physicists from Shanghai Humboldt Research Award recipients Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Putnam Fellows

Honours & Awards

Books

See also

References