New Postage Stamp Honors Pioneering Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu (nbcnews.com) 52
The U.S. Postal Service on Thursday unveiled a new postage stamp honoring Chien-Shiung Wu, a trailblazing Chinese American nuclear physicist whose myriad accomplishments earned her the nickname "the First Lady of Physics." From a report: The stamp's release was timed to coincide with the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, an annual event that was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 to celebrate female scientists and promote equal access for women and girls in science and technology. Kristin Seaver, executive vice president of the Postal Service, called Wu "one of the most influential nuclear physicists of the 20th century." Wu "made enormous contributions to our understanding of radioactivity and the structure of the universe," Seaver said Thursday in a taped virtual ceremony to mark the stamp's first day of issue.
Wu was born in China in 1912 and moved to the United States at the age of 24. She received a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. Wu is best known for her experiments in the 1950s on a quirky but fundamental property in physics known as parity symmetry. Physicists at the time thought that processes in the real world -- basic interactions such as electromagnetism, for instance -- should be indistinguishable when those same processes are viewed in a mirror. In other words, while a mirror may interchange left and right, it was thought that nature did not distinguish between the two.
Wu was born in China in 1912 and moved to the United States at the age of 24. She received a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley. Wu is best known for her experiments in the 1950s on a quirky but fundamental property in physics known as parity symmetry. Physicists at the time thought that processes in the real world -- basic interactions such as electromagnetism, for instance -- should be indistinguishable when those same processes are viewed in a mirror. In other words, while a mirror may interchange left and right, it was thought that nature did not distinguish between the two.
Oldman MAGA makes obvious rapist remark. (Score:1)
I mean racist.
Funny ;)
Re:Biden chats with XI (Score:4, Funny)
Then he hopped in his time machine and went back over a month before he was inaugurated to order the postal service to include her in a series of stamps celebrating Asian-American heritage.
Why else would the postal service do a stamp of her? Sure, she was an American citizen who was instrumental in both the Manhattan Project and one of the most important physics discoveries of the 20th Century, but they must have done it to curry favor with Xi.
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In some cases, probably true, but doesn't mean it's not good to celebrate a great physicist. Personally, the bit I'm cheering for is "Physicist on a celebration icon" rather than a sports celebrity, a person who's famous for being famous or something of that ilk.
Just because someone's a frothing zealot doesn't mean they're not occasionally right, or have something worthwhile to say. Judge information on its own merits, not by who spoke it.
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I studied physics and oppose sexism, so would happily agree if I believed she was chosen for her talents.
Unfortunately, like the VPOTUS, like one of the next people to walk on the moon and like way too many job applicants around the world, she was chosen over others more deserving solely because she had a vagina.
That is sexist.
Stop sexism.
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She moved to the US at 24, then studied at Berkeley. Can you imagine what the reaction would have been like today? No visa to stay on and then accused of taking US knowledge back to China, national security risk...
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Truth.
She fled the communist before they existed!! (Score:2)
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The Communist Party in China was very active in the 1930s.
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The chronology doesn't work out. She left China in 1936, 13 years before the Republican government fell to the Communists, and in fact eleven months before the Sino-Japanese war broke out.
She was working as an experimenter and research assistant and Zhejian University and moved to the US because she could pursue a PhD here.
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Geez, it's the first hit on a search:
"The Chinese Civil War was a civil war in China fought between the Kuomintang (KMT)-led government of the Republic of China (ROC) and the Communist Party of China (CPC) lasting intermittently between 1927 and 1949. The war is generally divided into two phases with an interlude: from August 1927 to 1937, the KMT-CPC Alliance collapsed during the Northern Expedition, and the Nationalists controlled most of China. From 1937 to 1945, hostilities were put on hold, and the Sec
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Whether she was anti-communist or not is neither here nor there. She was working in Hangzhou, which is firmly under KMT control, so she wasn't attempting to "escape communism", although she did have a lucky escape from the Japanese. The KMT-CPC alliance you refer to hadn't even been formed when she left China, which you'd know if you actually knew the history rather than just Googled support for your opinions.
This is also my own family history; the Communists tried to recruit my father, but instead he emi
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She moved to the US at 24, then studied at Berkeley. Can you imagine what the reaction would have been like today? No visa to stay on and then accused of taking US knowledge back to China, national security risk...
Well, the idea that anyone not "white", male or Caucasian is looked at askance because of their beingness - outside of the last 4 years is a bit of a meme. I mean the new Vice President Kamala Harris, clicking the boxes of woman, African, and Asian is going to be cleared at the highest level.
In my work environment as the so called "white" male of eastern European and italian heritage, I was definitely the minority, if you count that sort of thing. Many women, a couple if Sikh males, Indian, Pakistani, Ch
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Given the capability, she'd have been welcomed. And given the support structures of somewhere like Berkely, she'd have stayed and done just what she did.
However, she fled Communist China, which was famous for cancelling anything they didn't like to hear (including when it was correct, because it wasn't politically correct to speak it), and often cancelled the person speaking it, with prejudice.
China today seems to be concentrating on investing in its brightest, so if the whole thing had been today, she'd l
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Damn those time travelling communists.
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Back at the time a visa wouldn't have been required, but a special ID would. Immigration quotas were a brand new thing; until a few years before anyone who wanted could immigrate to the US, with a brief stop at an immigration station where an inspector would try to determine whether you were sick, an imbecile, or an anarchist. After that you walked out and could go anywhere you want.
The one exception was the Chinese, who were banned from entry in 1882. There were exceptions made for diplomats, rich peo
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Well she did most of the experiment design as I understand it, though they came up with the theory. Plus, she's done a lot of other experiments to help prove things like entangled photons as predicted by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen or the Conserved Vector Current hypothesis.
I see a marketing problem (Score:1)
Who wants to lick a nuclear postage stamp?
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Do they even make licky stamps anymore? All of mine are self-adhesive.
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Only because they are irradiated.
More context (Score:5, Informative)
Wu's experiment put a sample of colbalt-60 into a strong magnetic field near absolute zero. Co-60 undergoes beta decay (caused by the weak interaction), spitting out an electron and anti-neutrino, then quickly also emits gamma rays (because the Ni-61 nucleus was in an unstable arrangement). The magnetic field establishes a preferred orientation for the Co-60 nuclei's spin. Crudely speaking, the emitted gamma rays were 50/50 aligned or anti-aligned with the magnetic field, because the electromagnetic force obeys parity symmetry. The experiment showed that the electrons were emitted in something like a 40/60 split. Nature is weird.
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When Wu demonstrated that the weak force violated P-symmetry, most of the physics community was genuinely surprised. Lee and Yang received the Nobel in 1957; Wu got...a pat on the back?
I dunno - is there a copy of the acceptance speech? I'm not certain what they mean by a mention.
It is definitely true she called the Chinese Madame Curie. She also received the first Wolf prize, so she didn't do to badly.
These discussions always deteriorate into how horribly women are treated. There have been 57 women awarded Nobels between 1901-2020, and 28 women received them between 2000 and 2020. https://www.nobelprize.org/pri... [nobelprize.org]
Do I think that Wu deserves the Nobel Prize and Le and Yang did not
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I can be worthwhile correcting historical wrongs, e.g. pardoning Alan Turing. Sends a important message and goes some way to righting a wrong our country oversaw, and makes it harder for homophobes to push their agenda when everyone is taught about true British heroes and how they were wronged by that kind of thinking.
It would be nice to acknowledge some historic women where a good argument can be made for them deserving a Nobel prize. Representation does matter, especially for children who need role models
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I can be worthwhile correcting historical wrongs, e.g. pardoning Alan Turing. Sends a important message and goes some way to righting a wrong our country oversaw, and makes it harder for homophobes to push their agenda when everyone is taught about true British heroes and how they were wronged by that kind of thinking.
One of the most insane crimes ever perpetrated on a person.
It would be nice to acknowledge some historic women where a good argument can be made for them deserving a Nobel prize. Representation does matter, especially for children who need role models and to see that STEM is not gendered.
The oddest thing is that I spent the earliest part of my career working with many of the first generation of modern science focused women in STEM. Many of them left, but not because they were treated badly, but because they just didn't care for the work.
The ones that stayed did well, and in the past decade, results were mixed. Some appear to have been talked into it, but again - they didn't care for the work.
So we have to make certain we don't
Re: Oh look, sexists (Score:2)
I hate on sexists, you fucking sexist shit fucktard.
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You're just a rather boring and non-ambitious troll.
Re: Oh look, sexists (Score:2)
And you're a sexist shit.
Step back, look at yourself and stop hating half the world.
Re: Oh look, sexists (Score:2)
Fair comment on the oschobabblers, but:
"Results revealed a 2:1 preference for women by faculty of both genders across both math-intensive and nonâ"math-intensive fields, with the single exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference. "
https://www.pnas.org/content/1... [pnas.org]
Is collecting U.S. postal stamps even a thing? (Score:2)
I hope people buy these things to put them in their stamp books, because it's not like you can use them to send mail.
I mailed a 3-day U.S. Priority Mail envelope (tracked, insured) to a U.S. address on January 20 and it still has not arrived. In fact, its status has not even been updated since January 27, except to say that it will be "arriving late" (shocker). I have another friend who received a Christmas card on January 31, and another who said his work sent him an Amex card and it took nearly three mon
Racism (Score:2)
What is it? (Score:1)
What is a "postage stamp"?