WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.359 You know, usually when we think about someone 00:00:03.359 --> 00:00:05.740 who literally rewrote the fundamental laws of 00:00:05.740 --> 00:00:08.619 the universe, we picture like a superhero origin 00:00:08.619 --> 00:00:11.160 story. Right. Yeah. Like some kind of mythology. 00:00:11.439 --> 00:00:13.679 Exactly. We picture someone hovering in the air 00:00:13.679 --> 00:00:16.359 with glowing hands, you know, just altering the 00:00:16.359 --> 00:00:19.620 very fabric of reality with a single thought. 00:00:19.760 --> 00:00:22.339 Oh, for sure. I mean, we expect that kind of 00:00:22.339 --> 00:00:24.940 world bending power to come with a cape, maybe 00:00:24.940 --> 00:00:27.920 a dramatic lightning strike and probably a booming 00:00:27.920 --> 00:00:30.899 voice. Right, but in the real world, the person 00:00:30.899 --> 00:00:32.679 who actually managed to pull that off didn't 00:00:32.679 --> 00:00:35.979 wear a cape. She wore a traditional Chinese kapow 00:00:35.979 --> 00:00:38.640 under a white laboratory coat. Yeah, which is 00:00:38.640 --> 00:00:41.079 just such a powerful image. It really is. And 00:00:41.079 --> 00:00:43.399 instead of glowing hands, she used extremely 00:00:43.399 --> 00:00:46.619 cold radioactive isotopes. If you dive into the 00:00:46.619 --> 00:00:48.979 historical archives, or honestly even just scroll 00:00:48.979 --> 00:00:51.759 through her incredibly detailed Wikipedia biography, 00:00:52.179 --> 00:00:54.700 you don't find a story of someone who just stumbled 00:00:54.700 --> 00:00:57.560 into greatness. No, not at all. You find a blueprint 00:00:57.560 --> 00:01:00.960 for how a single human being can completely reshape 00:01:00.960 --> 00:01:03.939 our understanding of the world. Which is arguably 00:01:03.939 --> 00:01:06.599 far more impressive than a superpower, if you 00:01:06.599 --> 00:01:08.879 think about it. Because she didn't just bend 00:01:08.879 --> 00:01:12.359 reality to her whim. She forced humanity to see 00:01:12.359 --> 00:01:15.079 reality exactly as it is, you know, with all 00:01:15.079 --> 00:01:17.659 its asymmetrical flaws. Welcome to this deep 00:01:17.659 --> 00:01:21.239 dive. Our mission today is to uncover the phenomenal 00:01:21.239 --> 00:01:24.939 story of Chen Shengwu. We are looking at a woman 00:01:24.939 --> 00:01:27.980 who broke the fundamental laws of nature, helped 00:01:27.980 --> 00:01:30.599 solve a critical, world -threatening crisis during 00:01:30.599 --> 00:01:33.099 the Manhattan Project, and then suffered a massive 00:01:33.099 --> 00:01:35.959 injustice. Exactly. Suffered what Nobel laureates 00:01:35.959 --> 00:01:38.319 call the biggest mistake in Nobel Prize history. 00:01:38.739 --> 00:01:40.879 Okay, let's unpack this. Because a mine like 00:01:40.879 --> 00:01:43.489 hers is forged. It's not just born. Absolutely. 00:01:44.030 --> 00:01:46.569 Her early environment was, well, it was foundational 00:01:46.569 --> 00:01:48.250 to everything she later achieved. She was born 00:01:48.250 --> 00:01:51.930 in 1912 in the town of Luwu in the Jiangsu province 00:01:51.930 --> 00:01:55.250 of China. Okay. And her father, Wu Zongyi, was 00:01:55.250 --> 00:01:57.859 a truly fascinating figure. I mean, he was an 00:01:57.859 --> 00:01:59.920 engineer by trade, but he was also this progressive 00:01:59.920 --> 00:02:02.200 social activist who had actually participated 00:02:02.200 --> 00:02:04.780 in a major political rebellion in 1913. Wait, 00:02:05.180 --> 00:02:07.200 a literal rebellion. So pushing back against 00:02:07.200 --> 00:02:09.520 the system was basically in her DNA from day 00:02:09.520 --> 00:02:12.680 one. Precisely. And after that rebellion failed, 00:02:13.000 --> 00:02:14.979 he didn't just give up. He moved back to Louis 00:02:14.979 --> 00:02:18.340 and founded the Ming De School for Girls, and 00:02:18.340 --> 00:02:21.500 he served as its principal. Wow. Yeah, he was 00:02:21.500 --> 00:02:24.280 a massive advocate for women's education in an 00:02:24.280 --> 00:02:27.939 era and a place where that was decidedly not 00:02:27.939 --> 00:02:30.389 the norm. And the way he raised her, this is 00:02:30.389 --> 00:02:32.389 the detail from the source that completely blows 00:02:32.389 --> 00:02:35.069 my mind. Instead of reading her typical children's 00:02:35.069 --> 00:02:38.009 bedtime stories, her father would sit there and 00:02:38.009 --> 00:02:40.810 read aloud from scientific journals. Right. Until 00:02:40.810 --> 00:02:43.009 she learned how to read them herself. Yeah. I 00:02:43.009 --> 00:02:44.889 mean, I have to push back on the cultural myth 00:02:44.889 --> 00:02:48.229 of the lone genius who just pops into existence 00:02:48.229 --> 00:02:50.949 out of nowhere. I know parents today who, like, 00:02:51.900 --> 00:02:54.360 meticulously curate educational podcasts for 00:02:54.360 --> 00:02:56.699 their kids trying to build baby geniuses. But 00:02:56.699 --> 00:02:59.400 this is next level. Oh, totally. Genius doesn't 00:02:59.400 --> 00:03:02.060 happen in a vacuum. It is deeply cultivated by 00:03:02.060 --> 00:03:04.580 the environment. What's fascinating here is the 00:03:04.580 --> 00:03:07.539 specific psychological resilience that environment 00:03:07.539 --> 00:03:09.719 created. Think about the dual tracks she was 00:03:09.719 --> 00:03:11.930 on. What do you mean? Well, she wasn't just learning 00:03:11.930 --> 00:03:14.750 the rigid objective rules of mathematics and 00:03:14.750 --> 00:03:17.969 physics. She was simultaneously absorbing literature 00:03:17.969 --> 00:03:21.810 on democracy and witnessing her father's political 00:03:21.810 --> 00:03:24.789 defiance. She was being explicitly taught not 00:03:24.789 --> 00:03:27.960 to blindly accept the status quo. Which perfectly 00:03:27.960 --> 00:03:30.960 explains her unbelievable drive. I mean, at just 00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:33.319 11 years old, she leaves home and travels 50 00:03:33.319 --> 00:03:36.139 miles away to attend a highly competitive boarding 00:03:36.139 --> 00:03:38.219 school. Yeah, an 11 -year -old taking that on 00:03:38.219 --> 00:03:41.180 is wild. And when she gets there, she's so fiercely 00:03:41.180 --> 00:03:43.240 ambitious that she makes sure she sits in the 00:03:43.240 --> 00:03:45.840 very front row just to impress her hero, the 00:03:45.840 --> 00:03:48.159 philosopher who she, who was a guest lecturer. 00:03:48.560 --> 00:03:50.680 She was literally positioning herself at the 00:03:50.680 --> 00:03:53.729 forefront of knowledge. That combination of strict 00:03:53.729 --> 00:03:56.870 scientific rigor and progressive rebellion really 00:03:56.870 --> 00:03:59.150 became the defining characteristic of her entire 00:03:59.150 --> 00:04:01.650 life. And it perfectly set the stage for her 00:04:01.650 --> 00:04:03.849 arrival in the United States in 1936. Right, 00:04:03.870 --> 00:04:05.930 when she traveled across the world. Exactly. 00:04:06.330 --> 00:04:08.590 She originally planned to attend the University 00:04:08.590 --> 00:04:10.849 of Michigan for her graduate studies in physics. 00:04:11.469 --> 00:04:13.789 But when she gets to the campus, she discovers 00:04:13.789 --> 00:04:16.610 this deeply sexist policy. Women weren't allowed 00:04:16.610 --> 00:04:18.589 to use the front entrance of the student union. 00:04:19.129 --> 00:04:22.019 I just, I can't even imagine. And... Remember 00:04:22.019 --> 00:04:24.120 her upbringing. She was raised by a man who founded 00:04:24.120 --> 00:04:27.180 a girls' school. She wasn't about to accept using 00:04:27.180 --> 00:04:29.720 a side door. Definitely not. So she just pivots. 00:04:29.899 --> 00:04:31.980 She completely abandons her plans for Michigan 00:04:31.980 --> 00:04:34.360 and immediately enrolls at the University of 00:04:34.360 --> 00:04:36.339 California, Berkeley, which was known for being 00:04:36.339 --> 00:04:39.060 much more progressive. And that pivot -driven, 00:04:39.259 --> 00:04:41.899 cheerily by a refusal to accept systemic degradation, 00:04:42.540 --> 00:04:45.779 is one of those, like, tiny historical dominoes 00:04:45.779 --> 00:04:48.379 that changes the entire world. Oh, for sure. 00:04:48.620 --> 00:04:50.699 Because Berkeley at that time wasn't just another 00:04:50.699 --> 00:04:53.560 school. It was home to Ernest Lawrence and his 00:04:53.560 --> 00:04:55.980 newly invented cyclotron. Wait, OK, before we 00:04:55.980 --> 00:04:58.000 get too deep into the physics weeds, what exactly 00:04:58.000 --> 00:05:00.699 is a cyclotron in plain English? Simply put, 00:05:00.819 --> 00:05:02.920 it's an atom smasher. OK, atom smasher. Yeah. 00:05:02.920 --> 00:05:06.490 Yeah. It's a massive machine that uses electromagnetic 00:05:06.490 --> 00:05:09.910 fields to spin charged particles in circles, 00:05:10.490 --> 00:05:13.269 accelerating them to incredibly high speeds before 00:05:13.269 --> 00:05:16.069 crashing them into targets. It was the absolute 00:05:16.069 --> 00:05:19.529 bleeding edge of nuclear physics. So by refusing 00:05:19.529 --> 00:05:22.899 to accept sexist limitations, Wu placed herself 00:05:22.899 --> 00:05:25.740 directly at the epicenter of the most important 00:05:25.740 --> 00:05:27.980 nuclear research on the planet. And before we 00:05:27.980 --> 00:05:29.839 get into the heavy science of what she did there, 00:05:30.000 --> 00:05:32.620 I have to mention the unbelievable historical 00:05:32.620 --> 00:05:35.060 irony she ran into at Berkeley. Oh, with Luke 00:05:35.060 --> 00:05:37.920 Yuan? Yes. She meets this physicist named Luke 00:05:37.920 --> 00:05:40.100 Yuan who eventually becomes her husband. But 00:05:40.100 --> 00:05:42.620 guess who Luke's grandfather was? Yuan Shikai. 00:05:42.920 --> 00:05:45.180 The self -proclaimed emperor of China. The exact 00:05:45.180 --> 00:05:47.980 same man her father had actively rebelled against 00:05:47.980 --> 00:05:51.079 back in 1913. The sources note she teased him 00:05:51.079 --> 00:05:53.579 relentlessly about it. It is such a wonderful 00:05:53.579 --> 00:05:56.160 human detail, but it also highlights that casual 00:05:56.160 --> 00:05:58.899 fearlessness she possessed. She was never intimidated 00:05:58.899 --> 00:06:01.639 by titles, by lineage, or by perceived authority, 00:06:02.300 --> 00:06:04.160 which was exactly the trait she needed because 00:06:04.160 --> 00:06:06.279 despite her brilliance, she was about to face 00:06:06.279 --> 00:06:08.759 a massive wall of systemic prejudice. Right. 00:06:08.819 --> 00:06:11.399 Let's set the stage for that. At Berkeley, she 00:06:11.399 --> 00:06:14.300 was undeniably brilliant. The Nobel laureate 00:06:14.300 --> 00:06:16.779 Luis Alvarez called her the most talented and 00:06:16.779 --> 00:06:19.720 most beautiful experimental physicist he'd ever 00:06:19.720 --> 00:06:21.839 met. And Ernest Lawrence, who directed the lab, 00:06:22.079 --> 00:06:24.420 said she would make any laboratory shine. But 00:06:24.420 --> 00:06:27.199 despite those glowing endorsements from the absolute 00:06:27.199 --> 00:06:30.079 top minds in the world, she couldn't secure a 00:06:30.079 --> 00:06:32.759 university faculty position. Because she was 00:06:32.759 --> 00:06:35.879 a woman and because she was Chinese, she was 00:06:35.879 --> 00:06:39.019 forced to remain a postdoctoral researcher. It's 00:06:39.019 --> 00:06:41.899 just infuriating. But then World War II breaks 00:06:41.899 --> 00:06:44.279 out and the Manhattan Project realizes they need 00:06:44.279 --> 00:06:46.920 the absolute best minds available, regardless 00:06:46.920 --> 00:06:48.980 of the prejudices of university hiring boards. 00:06:49.259 --> 00:06:51.500 Yeah, desperation changes the rules. Exactly. 00:06:51.660 --> 00:06:54.839 So in 1944, she joins the substitute alloy materials 00:06:54.839 --> 00:06:57.600 laboratories, the SAM Labs at Columbia University. 00:06:57.819 --> 00:07:01.300 And this leads to a massive world -altering crisis 00:07:01.300 --> 00:07:05.000 with the B Reactor. Yes. The B Reactor at the 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:07.220 Hanford site in Washington state. It was the 00:07:07.220 --> 00:07:09.860 world's first practical large -scale nuclear 00:07:09.860 --> 00:07:12.100 reactor, and it was crucial for producing the 00:07:12.100 --> 00:07:14.420 plutonium needed for the war effort, but had 00:07:14.420 --> 00:07:16.779 a catastrophic problem. A very weird problem. 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:19.060 It kept mysteriously shutting down, seemingly 00:07:19.060 --> 00:07:21.120 on its own, and then starting back up again hours 00:07:21.120 --> 00:07:23.800 later. You had heavyweights like Enrico Fermi 00:07:23.800 --> 00:07:26.180 and John Archibald Wheeler completely stumped. 00:07:26.220 --> 00:07:27.939 Right. They had no idea what was happening. And 00:07:27.939 --> 00:07:30.019 I understand the stakes were literally a world 00:07:30.019 --> 00:07:32.279 war, but I'm a bit lost on the actual mechanism 00:07:32.279 --> 00:07:35.170 here. The source says Amelia Segre remembered 00:07:35.170 --> 00:07:37.910 a completely unpublished typewritten draft of 00:07:37.910 --> 00:07:41.069 a PhD thesis. Wu had written back at Berkeley 00:07:41.069 --> 00:07:43.850 about the radioactive isotopes of xenon. That's 00:07:43.850 --> 00:07:47.810 right. He tells Fermi, simply, ask Ms. Wu. But 00:07:47.810 --> 00:07:50.709 how does an unpublished paper about a gas solve 00:07:50.709 --> 00:07:53.310 a nuclear reactor crisis? Like, how does a gas 00:07:53.310 --> 00:07:55.829 poison a reaction? Okay, think of a nuclear chain 00:07:55.829 --> 00:07:58.850 reaction like a carefully contained fire. But 00:07:58.850 --> 00:08:01.089 instead of oxygen, the fire feeds on particles 00:08:01.089 --> 00:08:03.920 called neutrons. As the uranium atoms split, 00:08:04.139 --> 00:08:06.540 they release more neutrons, which split more 00:08:06.540 --> 00:08:09.160 atoms, keeping the fire going. OK, makes sense. 00:08:09.300 --> 00:08:11.660 But splitting those atoms also creates byproducts, 00:08:11.720 --> 00:08:14.439 kind of like ash from a fire. One of those byproducts 00:08:14.439 --> 00:08:18.480 is xenon -135. Now Wu's research had mapped exactly 00:08:18.480 --> 00:08:22.300 how xenon -135 behaves. And turns out, it's like 00:08:22.300 --> 00:08:25.079 a massive, highly efficient sponge for neutrons. 00:08:25.319 --> 00:08:28.139 So the ash was basically soaking up all the fuel. 00:08:28.339 --> 00:08:31.240 Exactly. As the reactor ran, it built up this 00:08:31.240 --> 00:08:34.940 xenon -135 ash, which absorbed so many neutrons 00:08:34.940 --> 00:08:37.539 that it choked out the nuclear fire. The reactor 00:08:37.539 --> 00:08:40.000 would just shut down. Then over a few hours, 00:08:40.120 --> 00:08:42.379 the radioactive xenon would naturally decay away, 00:08:42.799 --> 00:08:45.279 the sponge would disappear, and the reactor could 00:08:45.279 --> 00:08:48.299 start up again. Because Wu had done the foundational 00:08:48.299 --> 00:08:50.720 rigorous work mapping this exact isotope years 00:08:50.720 --> 00:08:52.860 prior, they were able to understand the problem. 00:08:52.980 --> 00:08:55.000 So they could fix it. Right. They increased the 00:08:55.000 --> 00:08:57.639 reactor's fuel load to overpower the xenon sponge 00:08:57.639 --> 00:09:01.159 and save the project. That is incredible. A typewritten, 00:09:01.539 --> 00:09:03.980 unseen paper from a woman who couldn't even get 00:09:03.980 --> 00:09:07.399 a teaching job literally saved the Allied Forces 00:09:07.399 --> 00:09:10.299 military industrial complex. If we connect this 00:09:10.299 --> 00:09:12.919 to the bigger picture, it is the ultimate example 00:09:12.919 --> 00:09:16.350 of how knowledge finds its value. Her deep, precise 00:09:16.350 --> 00:09:18.950 understanding of invisible mechanisms was the 00:09:18.950 --> 00:09:20.870 only thing that could fix the physical world. 00:09:21.250 --> 00:09:23.230 Now, it's worth noting here that her relationship 00:09:23.230 --> 00:09:26.250 with her own work was deeply complex. We're looking 00:09:26.250 --> 00:09:28.129 at her life through the lens of history, and 00:09:28.129 --> 00:09:30.370 the reality of the atomic bomb is incredibly 00:09:30.370 --> 00:09:32.730 heavy. Oh, absolutely. The source has mentioned 00:09:32.730 --> 00:09:35.690 that later in life, she actively distanced herself 00:09:35.690 --> 00:09:38.029 from the Manhattan Project because of its destructive 00:09:38.029 --> 00:09:41.149 outcome. She even advised the Taiwanese president 00:09:41.149 --> 00:09:44.179 never to build nuclear weapons. But at the same 00:09:44.179 --> 00:09:47.379 time, she expressed this fierce, lasting belief 00:09:47.379 --> 00:09:50.840 in humankind's ability to live peacefully. Yeah, 00:09:51.100 --> 00:09:53.139 she built the foundations of the Atomic Age. 00:09:53.559 --> 00:09:56.159 She saw exactly what it did, and she carried 00:09:56.159 --> 00:09:57.960 the weight of that knowledge for the rest of 00:09:57.960 --> 00:10:01.259 her life. It's a profound burden, but scientifically 00:10:01.259 --> 00:10:03.759 speaking, her work on the reactor absolutely 00:10:03.759 --> 00:10:06.519 cemented her reputation. She became known in 00:10:06.519 --> 00:10:08.980 the physics community as the ultimate problem 00:10:08.980 --> 00:10:11.240 solver. Yeah, if you had an experimental physics 00:10:11.240 --> 00:10:13.299 problem that nobody else on Earth could figure 00:10:13.299 --> 00:10:16.460 out how to test, you went to Chin Shun Wu. Which 00:10:16.460 --> 00:10:19.580 brings us to a moment where two theoretical physicists 00:10:19.580 --> 00:10:22.259 decided they wanted to challenge the very bedrock 00:10:22.259 --> 00:10:25.820 of reality. This is her crowning scientific achievement, 00:10:25.879 --> 00:10:28.889 and honestly, the most infuriating part of her 00:10:28.889 --> 00:10:31.149 story. Here's where it gets really interesting. 00:10:31.490 --> 00:10:32.769 Ah, you're talking about the parity experiment? 00:10:33.090 --> 00:10:35.789 Yes. So in physics, there was an unquestioned 00:10:35.789 --> 00:10:38.129 assumption called the law of conservation of 00:10:38.129 --> 00:10:41.269 parity. It basically assumed that nature doesn't 00:10:41.269 --> 00:10:44.370 favor left or right. There is a fundamental symmetry 00:10:44.370 --> 00:10:48.090 to the universe. Think of it like a mirror. If 00:10:48.090 --> 00:10:50.509 you build a wind -up clock, and then somehow 00:10:50.509 --> 00:10:53.570 build a perfect mirror image version of that 00:10:53.570 --> 00:10:55.990 clock where all the gears are flipped left to 00:10:55.990 --> 00:10:58.970 right. The law of parity states that both clocks 00:10:58.970 --> 00:11:01.730 will keep time in the exact same way. Right. 00:11:01.889 --> 00:11:04.090 The universe shouldn't care if a process is flipped 00:11:04.090 --> 00:11:08.100 in a mirror. Exactly. But two brilliant theorists, 00:11:08.379 --> 00:11:11.360 Song Daoli and Chen Ningyang, started to suspect 00:11:11.360 --> 00:11:14.179 that this law might not be true for what are 00:11:14.179 --> 00:11:16.679 called weak interactions, which are the subatomic 00:11:16.679 --> 00:11:19.080 forces responsible for radioactive decay. But 00:11:19.080 --> 00:11:20.700 it's just math on a chalkboard for them. They 00:11:20.700 --> 00:11:22.759 couldn't prove it physically, so they go to the 00:11:22.759 --> 00:11:25.919 ultimate experimentalist. And the experiment 00:11:25.919 --> 00:11:28.539 she designed to test this was a total masterpiece 00:11:28.539 --> 00:11:31.559 of scientific engineering. To see if beta particles 00:11:31.559 --> 00:11:34.100 from radioactive decay favored a specific direction, 00:11:34.440 --> 00:11:36.919 she had to align the spins of the atomic nuclei. 00:11:37.120 --> 00:11:39.179 She had to make them all face the same way. Right, 00:11:39.179 --> 00:11:42.159 but normally, atoms are jiggling around constantly 00:11:42.159 --> 00:11:45.080 due to thermal vibration. So she takes radioactive 00:11:45.080 --> 00:11:47.399 cobalt -60 to the National Bureau of Standards, 00:11:47.580 --> 00:11:50.080 and she cools it down to cryogenic temperatures 00:11:50.080 --> 00:11:54.159 like near absolute zero. By doing this... She 00:11:54.159 --> 00:11:56.600 essentially freezes the atoms in place so they 00:11:56.600 --> 00:11:59.340 stop jiggling. Yeah. But how does she actually 00:11:59.340 --> 00:12:02.820 line them up once they're frozen? Imagine a vast 00:12:02.820 --> 00:12:05.779 ocean filled with thousands of floating booties 00:12:05.779 --> 00:12:09.379 bobbing chaotically in every direction. The cryogenic 00:12:09.379 --> 00:12:12.779 cooling stops the bobbing. Then she applied a 00:12:12.779 --> 00:12:15.740 massive magnetic field. OK. That magnetic field 00:12:15.740 --> 00:12:18.600 acts like a strong, sudden ocean current, forcing 00:12:18.600 --> 00:12:20.639 all the boys to instantly point in the exact 00:12:20.639 --> 00:12:23.100 same direction. Once they were all lined up, 00:12:23.320 --> 00:12:25.679 she watched to see which way the decaying particles 00:12:25.679 --> 00:12:27.879 would shoot out. And if parity was conserved, 00:12:27.960 --> 00:12:29.620 you know, if the universe was symmetrical, they 00:12:29.620 --> 00:12:31.259 should shoot out equally in both directions, 00:12:31.440 --> 00:12:33.159 right? Exactly. But they didn't. They were asymmetrical. 00:12:33.279 --> 00:12:35.539 They heavily favored a specific direction. To 00:12:35.539 --> 00:12:37.559 use your mirror analogy, it would be like looking 00:12:37.559 --> 00:12:39.980 into a mirror, raising your right hand and watching 00:12:39.980 --> 00:12:42.440 your reflection raise its left hand. But then 00:12:42.440 --> 00:12:45.299 your reflection independently winks at you. Yeah. 00:12:45.529 --> 00:12:47.549 It fundamentally breaks the rules of reality. 00:12:47.889 --> 00:12:50.870 She proved that at a subatomic level the universe 00:12:50.870 --> 00:12:54.549 is lopsided. The famous physicist Wolfgang Pauli 00:12:54.549 --> 00:12:56.970 had actually made a massive bet that parity was 00:12:56.970 --> 00:13:00.190 conserved and he lost. It completely shocked 00:13:00.190 --> 00:13:02.230 the scientific world. Oh, it altered the entire 00:13:02.230 --> 00:13:04.330 trajectory of particle physics. But then comes 00:13:04.330 --> 00:13:07.679 the snub. In 1957, the Nobel Prize in Physics 00:13:07.679 --> 00:13:10.100 is awarded for this world -shattering discovery. 00:13:10.480 --> 00:13:13.139 And the committee gives it to Li and Yang, the 00:13:13.139 --> 00:13:15.940 theorists. Qin Shenwu, the woman who actually 00:13:15.940 --> 00:13:17.840 proved it in the physical world, who designed 00:13:17.840 --> 00:13:20.799 the impossible experiment, was entirely omitted. 00:13:20.980 --> 00:13:23.659 And I have to push back hard on this. Our sources 00:13:23.659 --> 00:13:26.320 explicitly state there was a firm tradition of 00:13:26.320 --> 00:13:28.740 awarding experimentalists over theorists during 00:13:28.740 --> 00:13:31.279 that era. So how on earth does the committee 00:13:31.279 --> 00:13:33.620 justify ignoring the person who did the hardest 00:13:33.620 --> 00:13:36.820 part? It is infuriating. The Nobel laureate Jack 00:13:36.820 --> 00:13:39.000 Steinberger frequently called it the biggest 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:40.940 mistake in the history of the Nobel committee. 00:13:41.500 --> 00:13:44.039 But what's fascinating here is how that omission, 00:13:44.340 --> 00:13:47.200 while deeply unjust, ended up immortalizing her 00:13:47.200 --> 00:13:49.279 in a different way. What do you mean? She was 00:13:49.279 --> 00:13:51.960 robbed. She was. She was later nominated for 00:13:51.960 --> 00:13:54.440 the Nobel Prize 23 times, though she never won 00:13:54.440 --> 00:13:57.799 it. She did win the inaugural Wolf Prize in physics 00:13:57.799 --> 00:14:01.019 in 1978, though. But the reason the omission 00:14:01.019 --> 00:14:04.360 immortalized her is because it was so glaringly 00:14:04.360 --> 00:14:07.620 wrong. Oh, I see. It became a massive catalyst. 00:14:07.919 --> 00:14:10.740 It sparked enduring conversations about the unseen 00:14:10.740 --> 00:14:13.600 labor of experimentalists, and specifically, 00:14:14.019 --> 00:14:16.700 the deeply ingrained biases against women in 00:14:16.700 --> 00:14:20.019 science. Her omission forced the scientific community 00:14:20.019 --> 00:14:22.240 to look in the mirror at its own asymmetry. That's 00:14:22.240 --> 00:14:24.059 a great way to put it. And scientifically, the 00:14:24.059 --> 00:14:26.500 CP violation she helped uncover. Wait, hold on. 00:14:26.500 --> 00:14:29.049 CP violation? We haven't defined that yet. Sorry, 00:14:29.070 --> 00:14:31.830 let me explain. C stands for charge conjugation 00:14:31.830 --> 00:14:35.730 and P stands for parity. Basically, physicists 00:14:35.730 --> 00:14:38.590 thought if you swap a particle for its antimatter 00:14:38.590 --> 00:14:41.470 equivalent, like flipping a charge, and view 00:14:41.470 --> 00:14:44.110 it in a mirror, flipping the parity, the universe 00:14:44.110 --> 00:14:47.690 should behave symmetrically. Okay. Woo helped 00:14:47.690 --> 00:14:52.210 prove that it doesn't. That tiny subatomic lopsidedness 00:14:52.210 --> 00:14:55.710 is the reason why At the dawn of the Big Bang, 00:14:56.110 --> 00:14:58.450 matter and antimatter didn't perfectly annihilate 00:14:58.450 --> 00:15:00.850 each other. Wow. It left a tiny bit of leftover 00:15:00.850 --> 00:15:03.710 matter. And that leftover matter is us. It explains 00:15:03.710 --> 00:15:06.570 why our universe exists at all. That is just 00:15:06.570 --> 00:15:08.470 incredible. So the universe was proven to be 00:15:08.470 --> 00:15:10.830 fundamentally asymmetrical, and so is the recognition 00:15:10.830 --> 00:15:12.990 in her own field. You'd think being robbed of 00:15:12.990 --> 00:15:14.929 a Nobel Prize would make someone retreat from 00:15:14.929 --> 00:15:17.210 the scientific community in bitterness. You really 00:15:17.210 --> 00:15:20.129 would. But Wu did the exact opposite. She used 00:15:20.129 --> 00:15:22.789 her newfound, undeniable elite status to start 00:15:22.789 --> 00:15:25.110 smashing entirely different kinds of ceilings. 00:15:25.570 --> 00:15:29.330 Yes, after the war she stayed at Columbia University 00:15:29.330 --> 00:15:32.750 and eventually became their first female tenured 00:15:32.750 --> 00:15:35.710 physics professor. Her students affectionately 00:15:35.710 --> 00:15:38.190 called her the dragon lady named after a comic 00:15:38.190 --> 00:15:40.529 strip character because she had unbelievably 00:15:40.529 --> 00:15:43.769 strict exacting standards in the lab. But there's 00:15:43.769 --> 00:15:45.629 this wonderful contradiction here. She's the 00:15:45.629 --> 00:15:47.809 terrifying dragon lady, but the source notes 00:15:47.809 --> 00:15:50.009 she ate lunch with her students every single 00:15:50.009 --> 00:15:52.750 day. She treated them like her own kids. Well, 00:15:52.970 --> 00:15:55.590 she demanded excellence because she knew exactly 00:15:55.590 --> 00:15:58.669 what it took to survive and thrive in an environment 00:15:58.669 --> 00:16:01.389 designed to keep you out. And. You know, she 00:16:01.389 --> 00:16:03.370 was dealing with immense personal sorrow at the 00:16:03.370 --> 00:16:05.690 same time. Right. The political situation in 00:16:05.690 --> 00:16:08.090 China. Exactly. Because of the Chinese civil 00:16:08.090 --> 00:16:10.169 war and the geopolitical tensions that followed, 00:16:10.710 --> 00:16:12.889 she wasn't permitted to return to mainland Shia 00:16:12.889 --> 00:16:16.090 to attend the funerals of her brother, her father 00:16:16.090 --> 00:16:18.789 or her mother. She was utterly cut off from her 00:16:18.789 --> 00:16:21.330 homeland for decades. Which makes the detail 00:16:21.330 --> 00:16:24.909 about her clothing so poignant. She wore a traditional 00:16:24.909 --> 00:16:27.809 Chinese qipao under her lab coat. every single 00:16:27.809 --> 00:16:30.629 day. It was her quiet, constant way of remembering 00:16:30.629 --> 00:16:33.330 the country she was exiled from. It was a very 00:16:33.330 --> 00:16:36.149 powerful visual representation of her identity 00:16:36.149 --> 00:16:38.750 worn proudly in spaces that traditionally tried 00:16:38.750 --> 00:16:41.190 to exclude her. And through all of this, she 00:16:41.190 --> 00:16:44.049 didn't slow down her research. She experimentally 00:16:44.049 --> 00:16:46.690 proved the conserved vector current hypothesis, 00:16:47.250 --> 00:16:50.690 the CVC hypothesis, for giants like Richard Feynman 00:16:50.690 --> 00:16:52.850 and Murray Gilman. OK, my turn to ask for an 00:16:52.850 --> 00:16:55.750 explanation. What exactly is the conserved vector 00:16:55.750 --> 00:16:59.590 current hypothesis in plain English? OK, imagine 00:16:59.590 --> 00:17:02.549 you're throwing a baseball. In an empty field, 00:17:02.669 --> 00:17:05.069 the ball travels on a clear, predictable path. 00:17:05.210 --> 00:17:07.450 But if you try to throw that same baseball in 00:17:07.450 --> 00:17:10.210 the middle of a violent hurricane, its path gets 00:17:10.210 --> 00:17:12.430 distorted by all the wind and debris. Mentally. 00:17:12.869 --> 00:17:15.289 Inside an atomic nucleus, particles are surrounded 00:17:15.289 --> 00:17:18.690 by a hurricane of other forces. The CBC hypothesis 00:17:18.690 --> 00:17:21.769 basically said that the underlying throw, the 00:17:21.769 --> 00:17:24.329 fundamental strength of the weak force, doesn't 00:17:24.329 --> 00:17:27.190 get changed or lost, even inside that chaotic 00:17:27.190 --> 00:17:29.849 nuclear storm. OK, I think I get it. Wu proved 00:17:29.849 --> 00:17:31.730 that the weak force remains perfectly conserved, 00:17:31.849 --> 00:17:34.190 no matter the surrounding chaos. And the way 00:17:34.190 --> 00:17:37.049 she proved that, it required her and her team 00:17:37.049 --> 00:17:40.069 to secretly copy the keys to the Columbia laboratories 00:17:40.069 --> 00:17:42.910 so they could sneak in at midnight to run the 00:17:42.910 --> 00:17:45.029 Van de Graaff accelerator. I love that detail. 00:17:45.210 --> 00:17:47.950 I just marvel at this contradiction. She's sneaking 00:17:47.950 --> 00:17:50.509 into labs at midnight like a rebellious teenager 00:17:50.509 --> 00:17:53.049 pulling a prank. But then a few years later, 00:17:53.109 --> 00:17:54.690 she's sitting down with the president of the 00:17:54.690 --> 00:17:57.069 United States to write national science policy. 00:17:57.200 --> 00:17:59.480 This raises an important question, as one Wu 00:17:59.480 --> 00:18:03.000 clearly asked herself, what good is scientific 00:18:03.000 --> 00:18:06.700 advancement if the society wielding it is fundamentally 00:18:06.700 --> 00:18:09.940 unequal? Right. For her, science and society 00:18:09.940 --> 00:18:14.019 were deeply interconnected. In 1975, she became 00:18:14.019 --> 00:18:16.460 the first female president of the American Physical 00:18:16.460 --> 00:18:19.519 Society. She used that formidable power to meet 00:18:19.519 --> 00:18:22.400 with President Gerald Ford and successfully lobbied 00:18:22.400 --> 00:18:24.819 him to create the Office of Science and Technology 00:18:24.819 --> 00:18:27.480 Policy. She wasn't just working in the lab anymore. 00:18:27.740 --> 00:18:30.200 She was designing the infrastructure of American 00:18:30.200 --> 00:18:32.660 science. And she demanded equality for herself 00:18:32.660 --> 00:18:35.799 and others, too. In 1975, the chairman of her 00:18:35.799 --> 00:18:38.420 department realized she was being paid significantly 00:18:38.420 --> 00:18:41.059 less than her male colleagues. Surprise, surprise. 00:18:41.480 --> 00:18:43.849 Right. And when they finally adjusted her salary 00:18:43.849 --> 00:18:46.250 to make it equal, she took all the retroactive 00:18:46.250 --> 00:18:48.529 pay she was owed and immediately donated it. 00:18:48.930 --> 00:18:51.210 She spoke out against gender discrimination at 00:18:51.210 --> 00:18:54.549 MIT. She boldly protested human rights issues, 00:18:55.009 --> 00:18:57.309 including the Tiananmen Square massacre and political 00:18:57.309 --> 00:19:00.420 imprisonments in Taiwan. She demanded the exact 00:19:00.420 --> 00:19:02.859 same precision and fairness from humanity as 00:19:02.859 --> 00:19:05.920 she did from her radioactive isotopes. She realized 00:19:05.920 --> 00:19:09.039 that the scientific method, the pursuit of objective, 00:19:09.380 --> 00:19:12.019 unvarnished truth, has to apply to how we treat 00:19:12.019 --> 00:19:15.160 people too. You can't accept bad data in the 00:19:15.160 --> 00:19:17.900 lab and you shouldn't accept bad laws in society. 00:19:18.059 --> 00:19:20.579 That is a phenomenal way to frame it. So let's 00:19:20.579 --> 00:19:22.539 look at the totality of what we've unpacked today. 00:19:23.099 --> 00:19:25.400 Chenxun Wu wasn't just a participant in the 20th 00:19:25.400 --> 00:19:27.900 century. She actively engineered it. She really 00:19:27.900 --> 00:19:30.599 did. She helped build the atomic age. She completely 00:19:30.599 --> 00:19:32.799 rewrote the laws of quantum mechanics to prove 00:19:32.799 --> 00:19:35.740 the universe is asymmetrical. And she broke glass 00:19:35.740 --> 00:19:38.759 ceilings so thoroughly that there is now a literal 00:19:38.759 --> 00:19:42.240 asteroid orbiting the sun bearing her name. So 00:19:42.240 --> 00:19:43.920 what does this all mean for you? When you look 00:19:43.920 --> 00:19:46.359 at her incredible legacy, what is the ultimate 00:19:46.359 --> 00:19:48.539 takeaway? Well, I want to leave you with one 00:19:48.539 --> 00:19:51.000 final mind -expanding detail from the sources 00:19:51.000 --> 00:19:54.339 to mull over. Late in her career, after dealing 00:19:54.339 --> 00:19:56.920 with the cosmos, nuclear reactors, and the fundamental 00:19:56.920 --> 00:20:00.660 fabric of reality, Wu took her vast expertise 00:20:00.660 --> 00:20:03.660 in physics and beta decay, and she applied it 00:20:03.660 --> 00:20:06.750 to biology. Wait. What? Yeah, specifically, she 00:20:06.750 --> 00:20:09.009 began studying the molecular changes in red blood 00:20:09.009 --> 00:20:11.690 cells that cause sickle cell anemia. She went 00:20:11.690 --> 00:20:14.650 from splitting atoms and rewriting gravity to 00:20:14.650 --> 00:20:17.269 studying human blood cells. Yes, and that is 00:20:17.269 --> 00:20:19.049 the provocative thought I want you to take away 00:20:19.049 --> 00:20:22.089 today. Think about the profound interconnectedness 00:20:22.089 --> 00:20:25.099 of knowledge. The exact same brilliant mind, 00:20:25.539 --> 00:20:27.880 and the exact same rigorous scientific principles 00:20:27.880 --> 00:20:30.720 that help split the atom and chart the invisible 00:20:30.720 --> 00:20:33.559 asymmetrical forces of the universe, were ultimately 00:20:33.559 --> 00:20:36.759 used to try and heal human blood. It challenges 00:20:36.759 --> 00:20:38.849 you to look at your own life and ask, You know, 00:20:39.170 --> 00:20:41.190 how might the highly specific skills you use 00:20:41.190 --> 00:20:44.309 for your current pursuits be the exact key needed 00:20:44.309 --> 00:20:46.109 to solve a completely different puzzle somewhere 00:20:46.109 --> 00:20:48.549 else? It really all connects. The real superhero 00:20:48.549 --> 00:20:51.589 of our story wasn't altering reality on a whim 00:20:51.589 --> 00:20:53.849 with glowing hands. She was looking closely at 00:20:53.849 --> 00:20:56.150 the broken, asymmetrical, incredibly complex 00:20:56.150 --> 00:20:58.950 pieces of our universe and carefully, brilliantly 00:20:58.950 --> 00:20:59.829 putting them to work.