Nobel Laureate Chen Ning Yang, Pioneer of Modern Physics, Dies at 103

Renowned physicist and Nobel Prize winner Chen Ning Yang has died in Beijing at the age of 103, Chinese state media reported on Saturday.

According to state broadcaster CCTV, Yang’s death was due to “illness,” though no further details were provided.

Born in Hefei, Anhui Province, in eastern China, Yang moved to the United States in the 1940s to pursue advanced studies in physics. He went on to hold several academic positions in the U.S. and became an American citizen before reportedly renouncing his U.S. citizenship in 2015.

Yang shared the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics with fellow scientist Tsung-Dao Lee for their groundbreaking work challenging the long-held law of conservation of parity in nuclear physics — a discovery that reshaped modern particle theory.

He is also celebrated for co-developing the Yang-Mills theory in the early 1950s with American physicist Robert Mills, a key framework describing how force-carrying particles interact — a cornerstone of modern quantum field theory.

In his later years, Yang served as a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he made, according to Xinhua News Agency, “important contributions to cultivating and recruiting talent and promoting international academic exchanges.”

Yang’s first wife, Chih Li Tu, passed away in 2003. The following year, at the age of 82, he married Weng Fan, a then 28-year-old graduate student.

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