Chien-Shiung Wu

Hello! My name is Chien-Shiung Wu. I was born in a small town in China on May 31st, 1912. When I was a little girl, my father started a school just for girls because he believed everyone deserved to learn. I loved my school! I read every book I could find and was always asking questions. I wanted to know how everything in the world worked, from the tallest mountains to the tiniest specks of dust.

My love for science grew bigger and bigger. I decided that to become a great scientist, I needed to travel to a new place with amazing universities. So, in 1936, I sailed across the giant ocean to America. It was a little scary but so exciting! I went to a famous school called the University of California, Berkeley. I studied physics, which is the science of how things move and work. I learned all about the invisible, teeny-tiny particles called atoms that make up everything around us. A few years later, in 1944, I started working at another great school, Columbia University, where I would do some of my most important work.

One day in 1956, two of my scientist friends, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen-Ning Yang, came to me with a puzzle. For a long time, scientists believed in a rule called 'conservation of parity.' It's a fancy way of saying that if you watched a science experiment in a mirror, it would follow the exact same rules. But my friends weren't so sure! They asked me to create a very difficult experiment to test if this rule was always true. It was like being a detective for the secrets of the universe! I had to be very, very careful and precise to get the right answer.

And guess what? My experiment showed that the old rule was wrong! The universe could tell the difference between left and right. This discovery was a huge surprise and changed physics forever. Because of my careful work, people started calling me the 'First Lady of Physics.' I taught and did experiments for many more years. I lived to be 84 years old. Today, people remember me for my courage to ask big questions and for showing the world that with curiosity and hard work, anyone can make a discovery that changes everything.