Entangled Worldlines: Four Physicists Whose Transnational Trajectories Reshaped Physics in China and the United States

Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee are eminent Chinese American physicists who not only shared the 1957 Nobel prize in physics for their breakthrough on parity conservation, but also made other important discoveries as well as played active roles in promoting US-China scientific exchanges. Less well-known were Deng Jiaxian and Zhu Guangya, close friends to Yang and Lee respectively who also received their PhDs in physics in the US but who made the choice to return to China in 1950 and became prominent leaders in Chinese science and technology. This talk explores the entangled trajectories of these American-educated Chinese physicists in an attempt to present a nuanced picture of the transnational characters of both Chinese and American science.