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Home , Physicist, Wen Ho Lee

Lee, Tsung Dao I 773

Lee was elected to the International Swimming Hall of and in promoting basic scientific research and educa­ Fame. He was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of tion in . Fame in 1990. USA Diving named an award after Tsung Dao Lee (Li Zhengdao in ) was born him called the WHOSAM, which is awarded to a div­ in Shanghai, China, on November 25, 1926, near the ing coach and athlete who demonstrate excellence end of the chaotic warlord period in modern Chinese and dedication to the sport while maintaining high history. His father, Li Junkang, had studied agricul­ mental and physical standards. In 2010, the City of tural chemistry in college and later managed a fertilizer Los Angeles created Sammy Lee Square in Los Ange­ factory. His mother, Zhang Mingzhang, had graduated les' s Koreatown in his honor. The city also named from a middle school, a rarity at the time. Learning August 8 as "Sammy Lee Day." , English, Chinese, and martial arts from Dr. Lee has contributed to the sport of diving in tutors at home, Lee lived a sheltered life in Shanghai other ways. He wrote a book called Diving published until 1941, when the Japanese invasion led his father in 1979. His name has become associated with a to send him and his two brothers inland, first to highly absorbent towel called "The Sammy Sport Zhejiang, then to Jiangxi provinces, to continue their Towel," which is used by virtually all divers during schooling. In 1943, Lee entered Zhejiang University, practice and competition. then in exile in Guizhou Province, to study , Rachel M. Joo but left a year later for the Southwest Associated Uni­ versity in Kunming, which was a wartimecombination See also Korean Americans; Koreatown of Beijing, Qinghua, and ankai Universities. Lee excelled in this competitive environment and was References selected for study in the at the end of Crowe, Jerry. 2011. "Lee ever Let Racism Block His the war as partof the Nationalist government program March to Diving Glory." Los Angeles Times. May 20. to prepare for the eventual making of atomic bombs. http://articles.latimes.com/20 l l/may/30/sport /la-sp In September 1946, Lee enrolled at the University -crowe-20110530. Accessed September 17, 2012. of Chicago where he studied under the Nobel-prize International Swimming Hall of Fame. "Sammy Lee Honor­ winning physicist , who impressed on ees 1968." http://www.ishof.org/Honorees/68/68 him the importance for theoretical physicists to keep slee.html. Accessed September 17, 2012. Law, Elliott. n.d. "Keck School Alumni in the Spotlight: in touch with . "Even now, sometimes Sammy Lee, MD '47." University of Southern Califor­ when I encounter difficulties," Lee later wrote, "I try nia, Keck School of Medicine Alumni Spotlight. http:// to imagine how Fermi might react under similar www .usctrojans.com/blog/2012/04/olympic-spotlight circumstances" (Novick 1986, 156). At Chicago, Lee -sammy-lee.htrnl. Accessed September 17, 20 l 2. developed a close friendship with Chen ing Yang, a NBC Sport . 1998. "The Olympic Show hosted by Dan fellow student from Southwest with whom he would Hicks: Sammy Lee." Yoo, Paula, and Dom Lee. 2004. Sixteen Years in Sixteen make some of his most importantscientific contribu­ Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story. New York: Lee and tions. Upon completing his PhD thesis on white dwarf Low Books. stars under Fermi in late 1949, Lee worked with the Indian American astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar at the university's Yerkes Observatory in southeast Wisconsin, for eight months. In 1950, Lee, Tsung Dao ( 1926-) Lee married Jeanette Chin, a fellow Shanghainese, and moved west to the , Tsung Dao Lee is one of the leading physicists in the Berkeley, as a lecturer in physics fora year. world and an influential leader in the Chinese Ameri­ In 1951, Lee accepted an appointment at the Insti­ can scientific community. Sharing the Nobel Prize in tute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he col­ Physics for l 957, Lee has played a key role in facilitat­ laborated with Yang, who preceded him there by two ing U.S.-China scientific and educational exchanges years, on two important papers in , 774 I Lee, Tsung Dao

which led to a memorable meeting with Albert temperature superconductivity to dark energy. He also Einstein at the institute. Lee moved to Columbia served as an inspiration to other physicists, both theo­ University in 1953 and was promoted to full professor­ retical and experimental, playing a major role in the ship in 1956. After a short hiatus, Lee and Yang development, for example, of the Relativistic Heavy­ resumed their collaboration in the mid- 1950s, first on Ion Collider at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, quantum field theory, then famously on the question which began operation in 2000 and has produced sev­ of the violation of parity. eral major discoveries. By 1955, many physicists were stymied by the so­ Since the early 1970s, Lee has spent much of his called theta-tau puzzle, two so-called "strange" par­ time and energy on promoting U.S.-China scientific ticles of different parity and decaying patterns and educational exchanges. In the summer of 1972, but sharing the same lifetime and mass. An unsuccess­ shortly afterPres ident Richard Nixon's historic trip to ful attempt to solve the problemled Lee to consider the Beijing, Lee and his wife visited China for the first time possibility that parity was not conserved when theta since he left in 1946 and they were received by Premier and tau decayed into other particles and that theta and Zhou Enlai. In May 1974, Lee met with the Chinese tau were the same particle with different parity states. leader Mao Zedong, and the two engaged in philosophi­ Encouraged by some preliminary tests carried by his cal discussions related to physics. Lee used his meetings Columbia colleague in April 1956, with Zhou and Mao to push forre formsin Chinese sci­ Lee began to formulate a strategy to examine whether ence and education, which had suffered greatly during parity was conserved in different nuclear processes. Mao's Cultural Revolution. Since then, Lee has contin­ In early May, Yang joined Lee and together, through ued to enj oy access to the Chinese leadership and pro­ threeweeks of intensive research and calculation, they vide advice on Chinese science and education policy. found, to their surprise, that the parity conservation One of his most influential undertakings was the so­ was never experimentally tested for weak interactions, called CUSPEA (China-U.S. Physics Examination and although it appeared to be well established for the Application) program, which brought nearly 1,000tal­ other three fundamental forces in nature: the strong, ented Chinese undergraduate students to come to study electromagnetic, and gravitational interactions. in the U.S. in the 1980s. He also helped China establish In June 1956, Lee and Yang published their doubt the postdoc system, establish a ational NaturalS cience about parity conservation in weak interactions in a Foundation to promote science funding based on peer paper titled "Question of Parity Conservation in Weak reviews, and build the successful Beijing Electron­ Interactions." Chien Shiung Wu, Lee's colleague at Positron Collider with American scientific assistance. It Columbia, soon carried out an with scien­ is interesting to note that although both Lee and Yang tists at the National Bureau of Standards in Washing­ have been influential in Chinese science and education ton, D.C., to prove Lee and Yang to be right. The policy, Lee generally emphasized the need forChina to discovery astonished the worldof physics and led to pursue basic research as a fountainhead fortechnology many further breakthroughs. In l 957, Lee and Yang whereas Yang saw applied research as a more direct shared the obel Prize in Physics. route to economic progress in China. Lee and Yang continued their fru itful collabora­ Zuoyue Wang tion, coauthoring altogether 32 papers from 1956 to See also Chinese Americans; Wu, Chien-Shiung 1962 on a number of topics in nuclear, particle, and statistical physics. The association was facilitated in 1960-1962 when Lee spent two yearsat the Princeton References institute. In 1962, however, their partnership collapsed Bernstein, Jeremy. 1967. A Comprehensible World. New because of personal friction arising from, in part, a dis­ York: Random House, 1967. Contains profileof Tsung pute over credit for their scientificdisc overies. Lee Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, "A Question of Parity," returnedto Columbia in 1963 and has remained active firstpub lished in The New Yorker, May 12, 1962, in research from to a theory of high- pp. 49-103. Lee, Wen Ho I 775

Lee, T. D. 1986. T. D. Lee: Selected Papers. Edited by G. only an hour's worth of daily exercise, during which Feinberg. Vol. 3. Boston: Birkhauser. he was kept in chains and shackles, conditions that Novick, , ed. 1986. Thirty Years since Parify were so severe that they prompted organizations such Non.conservation.: A Symposium fo r T. D. Lee. Boston: Birkhauser. as Amnesty International, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and various Asian American organizations to protest Lee's treatment as being cruel and inhumane. Lee, Wen Ho (1939-) Although the media and the government portrayed Lee as the next Aldrich Ames or Julius and Ethel Wen Ho Lee is a Taiwanese American nuclear Rosenberg-a figure so dangerous that government who was falsely accused of espionage by the United prosecutors advised Chief Judge James Parker of the States government in 1999. Lee was born on Decem­ United States District Court for the District of New ber 21, 1939, in antou, , during the Japanese Mexico against granting Lee bail-it soon became ap­ occupation. He earned a degree in mechanical engi­ parent that Wen Ho Lee bore more similarity to Alfred neering at Cheng Kung University in 1960, and came Dreyfus, the French Jewish officer falsely accused of to the United States in 1964, where he earneda doctor­ passing on French military secrets to Germany during ate at Texas A&M University in 1969. He married his the late nineteenth century. Numerous nuclear and wife, Sylvia, the same year and they eventually had defense experts rejected the Times's claim that the two children, Chung and Alberta. W-88 design plans were vital to China's nuclear devel­ In 1974, Lee became an American citizen, which opment, noting that any weapons gains could have as allowed him to apply forjo bs at U.S. national laborato­ easily been because of internal research. Fmther inves­ ries. In 1978, he was hi.red by Los Alamos ationaJ Lab­ tigation revealed that, because the design plans for the oratory, where he worked in the X Division, which was W-88 were not even housed at Los Alamos, the theft in charge of nuclear weapons research. On March 6, could not have originated from the X Division, so 1999, published an article by Jeff Lee could not have been the one who had stolen the Gerth and regarding a weapons breach at plans. Likewise, the information that Lee had down­ Los Alamos National Laboratory, with the main suspect loaded was already widely available within the U.S. described as a Chinese American scientist who had nuclear weapons community, as well as on the Internet knowledge of the W-88 warhead. The FBI inte1rngated and could be saved on computer desktops as well as Lee about two trips that he had made to China and sent through the U.S. mail. accused him of failing two tests that seemed The government prosecutors had also misled the to indicate he wa s involved in espionage, causing courti n several key areas. Under intense questioning Department of Energy Secretary to fire from Lee's defense team, lead FB I investigator Robert Lee from his job at Los Alamos. Messemer retracted crucial testimony and admitted In April 1999, another Timesarticle surfaced, with that his previous statements, which claimed that Lee the claim that, according to government and Jab offi­ had lied to investigators and colleagues, were false. A cials, Lee had downloaded classified data about the CBS story revealed that the FBI had also falsely United States' nuclear weapons from secure reported the results of Lee's polygraph tests, claiming government networks to his home computers and onto that he had failed the first test administered, when in portable tapes. On December 10, 1999, the Justice fact he had passed it, and then refusing to disclose the Department arrested Lee and charged him with 59 results of the second test. Lee's defense team also counts of mishandling classified information, with the unearthed evidence of racial profiling and the domi­ intent to aid a foreign country, under the Atomic nant role that it played in the government ' s investiga­ Energy and Federal Espionage acts. When in prison, tion. In a sworn statement, Robert Vrooman, the Lee sat in solitary confinement, without access to read­ former head of counterintelligence at Los Alamos, ing materials, , or radio for278 days. He had confirmed that Notra Trulock, the former head of