T.D. Lee changed science in China and my life. This is what I owe to him

Yangyang Cheng is a particle physicist and a research scholar in law and fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, where her work focuses on the development of science and technology in China and U.S.-China relations.

In 1974, Tsung-Dao (T.D.) Lee visited a dance academy in Shanghai and came up with an idea: shao nian ban , the Special Class for the Gifted Young. Thirty years later, I studied physics in China at the program Lee had conceived. For generations of Chinese scientists including myself, we owe much of our careers to Lee, not just for his contributions to particle physics, but also for his unparalleled efforts in advancing higher education in China and facilitating U.S.-China scientific exchange. A professor emeritus at Columbia University and one of the first two Chinese-born Nobel laureates, Lee passed away on Aug. 4. He was 97.

Driven by an insatiable curiosity, an eye for beauty and a deep love for humanity, Lee’s work probed the mysteries of the universe and illuminated the intricate relations between science and the state. His legacy holds rich lessons and leaves many questions on how nature works and how scientists should fulfill their civic duties.

Born in Shanghai in 1926, Lee moved to the United States in 1946 for graduate studies. The two world wars had ushered in a golden era for physics, thanks to the discipline’s military and industrial applications. The Nationalist government of China selected a small group of students to learn nuclear technology from the U.S., China’s World War II ally. Lee and his schoolmate Zhu Guangya were the two physicists in the group. U.S. authorities prohibited sharing knowledge about the atomic bomb, and the Chinese students pursued fundamental science instead. Zhu went to the University of Michigan and Lee to the University of Chicago. Both graduated in 1950, shortly after the Communists won the civil war in China and the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan. Zhu returned to his birth country and later became a leader in China’s nuclear weapons program. Lee stayed in the U.S., where he continued on a promising path in theoretical astrophysics and particle physics.

In 1956, Lee and his colleague Chen Ning Yang, a fellow Chinese graduate of the University of Chicago, proposed novel methods to examine “parity violation,” where the universe’s mirror reflection behaves differently from the original in certain cases. Their theory was experimentally proven , first by Chinese American physicist Chien-Shiung (C.S.) Wu and her team and soon by others, and the duo were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics the following year. The Cold War elevated this breakthrough in fundamental science to geopolitical significance. Authorities in Washington, Taipei and Beijing all tried to claim the accomplishment as a point of national pride.

Lee and Yang’s work overturned long-held assumptions about a basic tenet of the universe and countered racial discrimination against Chinese scientists in the West. The concept of parity violation also served an unexpected ideological purpose in Mao Zedong’s China. At the time, many scientists were persecuted in China when their work was deemed contradictory to the Communist Party’s doctrine, but the party embraced Lee and Yang’s theory, not just for the pair’s Chinese heritage. Mao and his followers argued that if a basic symmetry of the universe is in fact broken, this was proof that nothing is permanent and anything could be changed through mass struggle. In 1966, fearing stagnation in society and the waning of his reign, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution and plunged his country into chaos. Schools were suspended. Intellectuals were forced into reeducation through hard labor.

But as U.S.-China relations thawed over shared concerns over the Soviet Union, Lee was finally able to visit his homeland in 1972, shortly after President Richard Nixon’s icebreaking trip. It was Lee’s first time back in 26 years. He witnessed the devastations wrought by political fanaticism, and advocated for basic research in meetings with Chinese leaders. But convincing radical wings within the party was no easy feat.

On his second visit in 1974, a tour of the Shanghai Ballet Academy sparked an idea. Lee noticed that the dancers began training at an early age and were spared from hard labor. He immediately penned a letter to Chinese authorities and raised this tentative proposal: “Though basic science is very different from dancing, could some similar methods be adopted in the selection and training of scientists?” Lee asked his old friend Zhu to deliver the letter to Premier Zhou Enlai, who passed it on to Mao.

A few days later, on May 30, 1974, Lee was summoned to a one-on-one meeting with Mao. Lee recounted the experience in a subsequent essay . “Tell me, why is symmetry of importance?” the chairman asked. Lee picked up a pencil from the table and rolled it back and forth across a notepad, as he explained to Mao how a dynamic process could also embody a higher order of symmetry. The conversation shifted from the laws of nature to the affairs of humans, and Lee was able to gain Mao’s approval for a gifted youth program in the sciences.

Political uncertainties halted the implementation. It was not until 1978, two years after Mao's death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, that the inaugural cohort of the Special Class for the Gifted Young were admitted to the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, a city in central China. The students were selected from across the country. All must be 15 or younger. The purpose of the program was much more than providing an elite college education for a small group of teens: its establishment was an important political signal from a new generation of Chinese leadership, who sought science and technology for national renewal.

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When my classmates and I arrived at USTC in 2005, Lee’s handwritten commemorative note greeted us by the entrance of the Gifted Young Building: “It is up to the youth to create.” Bulletin boards showcased the achievements of famous alumni, including prominent scientists, tech executives and a few who made their fortunes on Wall Street. Our teachers took care to shield us from public fascination with the notion of “prodigy”; a few years of age difference was nothing to dwell on. As Lee reflected in an essay on the program’s 27th anniversary, the real goal of his initial proposal was not to devise a gifted youth class per se, but to instigate an opening, to forge an opportunity for science education amid political turmoil. The program was a product of its time; its specificities, including the age requirement, were persuasion tactics that reflected Lee’s impressive political acumen.

As an unofficial adviser to the Chinese government and a scientific ambassador between his birth country and his adopted home, Lee was instrumental in a wide range of education and exchange programs in China. The China-U.S. Physics Examination and Application ( CUSPEA ) program, initiated and managed by Lee, provided one of the first pathways for Chinese students to attend graduate school in the U.S. in the post-Mao era.

Lee was also one of the earliest and most important proponents of the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider, China’s first and only high-energy particle collider experiment. This October marks the 40th anniversary of the facility’s groundbreaking. China’s leader Deng Xiaoping took part in the ceremony and gave the project his personal blessing. The Chinese collider also received significant external support, especially from the U.S. After several upgrades , the experiment is still going and maintains a vibrant international collaboration.

I completed my undergraduate thesis on this experiment and came to the U.S. in 2009 to pursue my Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago, Lee’s alma mater. The wall outside the department’s administrative office was adorned with a long row of portraits, featuring Nobel laureates who had called the institution home. Among them were Lee's and Yang's. The first time I stood in front of their photos felt like a pilgrimage.

I never had the chance to meet Lee in person, but his presence always felt near. I came across his name in papers and textbooks. My doctoral adviser worked on CUSPEA admissions in the 1980s. My colleagues who went to graduate school during that time would bring up how good their Chinese classmates were: After passing CUSPEA, homework was a piece of cake!

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In its decade-long run since 1979, nearly a thousand Chinese physicists were able to study in the U.S. through CUSPEA. Many became leaders in their fields. As higher education in China recovered from Mao-era disasters and students there could apply to American schools directly, the last class of CUSPEA students was admitted in 1989.

That June, when tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square to crush the student-led pro-democracy movement, Lee was hosting an international physics symposium in Beijing. He arranged for the safe departure of the attendees, and dedicated the conference proceedings , published in the following year, to the victims of Tiananmen: “many were idealistic and innocent.” In response to the atrocity, many academic organizations in the U.S. suspended collaborations with China. Some scientists advocated for a sustained boycott.

For three months after the massacre, Deng disappeared from public view. When the Chinese leader stepped in front of the cameras again in September, Lee was by his side. The two shook hands and spoke at length. A photo of them smiling together appeared on the front page of The New York Times .

Lee’s meeting with Deng led to much critique from the scientific community. The esteemed physicist had lent his reputation to a brutal leader and helped restore the latter’s image. In a letter to his colleague Stanley Deser, who had attended the June symposium in Beijing and witnessed the carnage, Lee explained that he had approached the Chinese leadership with three requests — publish the casualty list, grant amnesty to the student protesters and offer support for the victims and their families — and received positive responses to all of them. “I am happy that, in spite of the turmoil, this year’s 74 new CUSPEA students were all allowed to come to this country,” Lee added.

A month after he sat next to Deng, Lee met with President George H. W. Bush to convey reconciliatory messages from the Chinese leader.

Thirty-five years after the bloodshed at Tiananmen, Chinese authorities have not fulfilled their promises of transparency or leniency. I wonder if Lee regretted his actions. As I reflect on this episode in his otherwise unimpeachable career, what really pains me is the thought that Lee had anticipated betrayal from the Chinese government and professional repercussions in the U.S., but believed he had to try anyway. He had a long, successful record in advising Chinese officials, but only when his and the state's objectives were aligned.

Beijing adopted Lee’s suggestions on advancing science and technology to strengthen its own power, but the state would not yield on issues that challenged its rule. The tragedy in Lee’s choices after Tiananmen exposed the limits of elite persuasion as a vehicle for change: To gain a seat at the table, one must accept the rules of the house. Even for a mind as brilliant as Lee’s, perhaps it was easier to propose breaking the symmetry of the universe than to imagine alternative governance in China.

At the end of his letter to Deser, Lee emphasized the importance of keeping contact with Chinese colleagues: “Only then can we hope to be helpful to them in a genuine way.” Lee’s position echoed that of Bush. The president had been eager to restore U.S.-China relations in the aftermath of Tiananmen, despite congressional pressure for tougher sanctions and moral outrage from the American public, and saw meeting with Lee as conducive to this goal.

But do better bilateral relations always benefit the people in either country? Maintaining dialogue without setting conditions or applying leverage can easily slip into acquiescence. To uphold the “universality of science and the free exchange between scientists of all nations,” as Lee put it , might be a worthy aspiration, but to mistake such cosmopolitan ideals as reality overlooks the political incentive, historical context and social conditions behind knowledge production, as well as the power structures that enable or prohibit the movement of people and ideas. The very political nature of science and scientific exchange has been evident throughout Lee’s education and career. Science is never innocent, even when scientists try their best to be.

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When physicist C.S. Wu died in 1997, Lee penned a moving essay recounting her illustrious life and their fruitful collaboration, culminating in the Nobel-winning discovery. In closing, Lee quoted what Albert Einstein had said in memory of Marie Curie: “At a time when a towering personality has come to the end of her life, let us not merely rest content with recalling what she has given to mankind in the fruits of her work. It is the moral qualities of its leading personalities that are perhaps of even greater significance for a generation and for the course of history…” Einstein, as Lee cited, went on to praise Curie’s “strength” and her “purity of will.”

These words, Lee wrote, were “the most fitting” to describe Wu, and I think they also apply to Lee. He embodied the best of both countries he called home and confronted some of their worst elements. He worked to distill the complexity of nature into fundamental principles and sought a higher unity that could transcend divisions. With the purity of will, he revealed the beauty of the world as well as its brokenness. The quest to decipher the universe and achieve better governance on Earth remains unfinished. Lee has done more than his share and deserves his rest. It is now up to us.

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