Dear Yifang，

It is with great sadness that we have learned of the passing of Tsung-Dao Lee. Together with Chen Ning Yang, he overturned one of the deeply held principles of physics by deducing that weak interactions violate parity. For this result he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1957, at the age of 31. During his long and illustrious career, he shaped the worldwide particle physics community’s understanding of particle physics with many fundamental breakthroughs. He also made important contributions more widely including to quantum field theory, nuclear physics, statistical mechanics, fluid mechanics, and astrophysics. TD Lee was also dedicated to physics education in China and the nurturing of young Chinese physicists. He initiated several projects to foster scientific collaboration between the China and the U.S.  including the China-U.S. Physics Examination and Application (CUSPEA) program that cultivated 915 doctoral students. Lee responded to the call to develop high energy physics and to construct high energy accelerators in China by facilitating many Chinese scholars to train in the United States and Europe.  These scholars later returned to China and played an important role in the development of high energy physics in China including realizing the Beijing electron-positron collider, Beijing spectrometer and the physics programme it has enabled.

The Department of Physics at the University of Oxford joins the global physics community in mourning the passing of Tsung-Dao Lee a towering giant of science and inspiration to us all.

Sincerely,

Ian

Ian Shipsey

Head, Department of Physics,

Henry Moseley Centenary Professor of Physics

Professorial Fellow, St. Catherine’s College

University of Oxford