From left to right. Front Row: unidentified, Shiing-Shen Chern, ZHOU Guangzhao, LIU Bie Ju.

Back Row: Johnson M.D. Cha, YANG Chen Ning, KAN Yuet Wai, Yuan T. Lee, CHA Chi Ming

On behalf of the Qiu Shi Foundation, it is our profound honor to pay tribute to our esteemed founding advisor, Professor Yang Chen-Ning, whose legacy continues to guide and inspire generations in the pursuit of truth and scientific progress.

Professor Yang passed away on October 18, 2025 in Beijing, China, at the age of 103.  He is remembered by many as the first Chinese Nobel laureates together with Tsung-Dao Lee who shared the Physics prize in 1957, and to those in the Qiu Shi Foundation family, as a teacher, mentor, friend, and our long-tenured founding advisor.

Professor Yang’s life journey exemplified the Foundation’s ideal – Seeking Truth From Facts – and serving humanity through science.

Intellectual Curiosity During Years of Turmoil

Professor Yang Chen-Ning (C. N. Yang) was born in 1922 in Hefei in Anhui Province, China, into a scholarly family. His father was a professor of mathematics at Tsinghua University, where Yang spent some of his early years. During years of turbulence and wars, Yang relocated to Kunming, a city surrounded by mountains in a southern corner of China, and pursued his studies at the National Southwestern Associated University — which was a temporary union of Tsinghua, Peking, and Nankai Universities and where he was mentored by some of China’s most eminent scholars. There, his brilliance in mathematics and physics shone.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in 1942 and a master’s degree from Tsinghua University in 1944, Yang embarked on further studies abroad. At the University of Chicago, Yang studied under Enrico Fermi, one of the great architects of modern physics. His years in Chicago laid the foundation for the groundbreaking theoretical work in particle physics. In 1949 he joined the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, where he began his collaboration with Tsung-Dao Lee, with whom he shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957.

The Architect of Modern Symmetry

Yang’s scientific achievements transformed the landscape of modern physics. In 1954, he and Robert Mills developed the Yang–Mills gauge theory, a framework that became the cornerstone of the Standard Model of particle physics, uniting our understanding of the fundamental forces of nature. This work provided the mathematical foundation for generations of discoveries in quantum field theory and high-energy physics.

He also made pivotal contributions to statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, and mathematical physics, formulating the Yang–Baxter equation, which found applications from quantum mechanics to modern computing.

He combined the Western style of questioning and the Eastern aesthetic sense of symmetry. His own work on the principles of Yang–Mills theory reflected this synthesis. Professor Yang was noted for saying:

“Nature seems to take advantage of the simple mathematical representations of the symmetry laws. When one pauses to consider the elegance and the beautiful perfection of the mathematical reasoning involved and contrast it with the complex and far-reaching physical consequences, a deep sense of respect for the power of the symmetry laws never fails to develop.”

Bridging East & West

After the reopening of China in the 1970s, Yang became one of the first Chinese-American scholars to return for academic exchange. Current Qiu Shi Foundation chairman Johnson Cha recalled his first encounter with Yang in 1971.  At that time, Yang had just returned to the US after visiting China and was on a lecture tour across the US.  At the Carnegie Mellon University where Johnson attended his talks, the packed hall filled with hundreds was captivated by his charisma and intellect.  While the China Professor Yang saw after decades away had put famine and division to the past, he spoke about the difficult yet hopeful path of recovery and renewal after a century of hardship, and the need for generations of collective effort to improve the nation’s condition. His words sparked reflection among young Chinese students studying abroad.

Through his lectures, mentorship, and the institutions he helped build — including his later work with the Qiu Shi Foundation — he reconnected generations of Chinese scientists with the global research community.

After an illustrious career spanning more than three decades at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he founded and directed the Institute for Theoretical Physics (later renamed the C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics), Professor Yang Chen-Ning retired from active teaching in the late 1990s. Yet retirement did not slow his pace — it opened a new chapter devoted to nurturing science in China.

In 1998, he accepted an appointment at Tsinghua University, returning to the institution where his academic journey began. There, at the Institute for Advanced Study, he guided research, mentored young physicists, and built an academic culture grounded in both scientific rigor and ethical responsibility.

Inspiration and Founding Role at the Qiu Shi Foundation

After Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour in 1992, which inspired renewed faith in science and reform, our founder Dr. Cha Chi Ming conceived the idea of creating a philanthropic organization to support Chinese scientists at a time when resources were limited, based on the idea of “sending coal in a snow storm,” a Chinese phrase meaning to give help when it is most needed.

In the early 1990s, Dr. Cha Chi Ming and Mr. Johnson Cha visited noted mathematics professor Shiing-Shen Chern at his home in Berkeley, California to discuss the idea of the Qiu Shi Foundation, asking about other gifted scientists who could join the worthy project.  There, they phoned Professor Yang Chen-Ning, who was at the State University of New York at Stony Brook at the time, and Berkeley chemistry professor Yuan T. Lee.  After the conversations, the venerable Professor Chern, and the two Nobel laureates Professor Yang and Professor Lee, gladly accepted the invitation and became the Foundation’s founding scientific advisors and trustees. Shortly after UCSF professor and hematologist Yuet-Wai Kan also joined forces, and the Foundation was launched with this formidable advisory board in 1994.  Ever since then, Professor Yang had been generous with his connections and shared his understanding of the Chinese science world and its needs at the time, and helped laid groundwork for the Foundation.

Legacy: Science, Scholarship, and Service

Yang served on many committees and advisory boards, but he considered his position with the Qiu Shi Foundation as a special commitment. For 30 years, Professor Yang has been deeply involved in the selection of award winners, offering his unparalleled insights and his analysis of the state of science. Despite his advanced age, he continued to attend the Qiu Shi award ceremonies, presenting prizes to generations of Chinese scientists and supporting their dreams.

In 2019, the Foundation recognized this lifelong devotion by presenting him the Qiu Shi Lifetime Achievement Award
— a symbolic full-circle moment, celebrating both his scientific contribution to modern physics and his foundational role in Qiu Shi’s creation.

Together with Professor Yang, the Foundation has witnessed the changing of the times. Yet, Yang’s global perspective continues to shape the Foundation’s outlook. His legacy is indelible, not just in theoretical physics, but in embodying the scientific spirit of Qiu Shi, and will continue to elevate, connect, and inspire generations of Chinese scientists worldwide.