Tsung-Dao Lee was a world-renowned Chinese-American theoretical physicist whose groundbreaking work transformed multiple areas of modern physics. Born in Shanghai, China on November 24, 1926, he earned his PhD from the University of Chicago under Enrico Fermi's mentorship after arriving in the United States on a scholarship in 1946. He began his illustrious academic career at Columbia University in 1953 as an assistant professor, where he would remain for nearly six decades until his retirement in 2012. Lee's early career saw him rapidly establish himself as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists of his generation, with Robert Oppenheimer praising his work for its remarkable freshness, versatility, and style. His foundational contributions began during his research appointments at the University of Chicago, University of California Berkeley, and Institute for Advanced Study before joining Columbia.
Lee's most celebrated achievement was his 1956 theoretical work with Chen Ning Yang demonstrating parity non-conservation in weak interactions, for which they received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 when Lee was just 31 years old, making him the second youngest Nobel laureate in physics. This paradigm-shifting discovery overturned the long-held assumption that physical systems and their mirror images must behave identically, fundamentally changing the understanding of symmetry in particle physics. His pioneering Lee Model provided a renormalizable field theory that significantly advanced quantum field theory research, while his work on slow electrons in polar crystals directly influenced the development of the BCS theory of superconductivity. Lee also made substantial contributions to the understanding of CP violation, quantum chromodynamics vacuum, phase transitions, and quark-gluon plasma, laying the theoretical foundation for relativistic heavy-ion collision physics. His early 1960s work with collaborators initiated the important field of high-energy neutrino physics, further expanding the frontiers of particle physics.
Beyond his Nobel-winning work, Lee maintained an extraordinarily broad research portfolio spanning statistical mechanics, astrophysics, hydrodynamics, many-body systems, and solid-state physics throughout his career. As University Professor Emeritus at Columbia, his legacy continues to influence generations of physicists through his profound theoretical insights and mathematical rigor. Lee was instrumental in international scientific cooperation, receiving some of the highest distinctions from the United States, China, Japan, and Italy for his contributions to global science research. He received numerous prestigious honors including the Albert Einstein Award, Galileo Galilei Medal, and G. Bude Medal, with two fundamental theorems bearing his name and a minor planet (3443 Leetsungdao) named in his honor. Lee passed away on August 4, 2024 in San Francisco at the age of 97, leaving behind an indelible mark on theoretical physics whose discoveries continue to shape our understanding of the universe's fundamental workings.
