Lee’s ancestral hometown is Suzhou, Jiangsu. He was born in Shanghai, China. Lee’s father was a chemical industrialist who was involved in China’s early development of fertilizer. Lee received his secondary education in Shanghai and Jiangxi.
Due to the Second Sino-Japanese war, Lee’s high school education was interrupted thus he didn’t obtain his secondary diploma. Lee directly applied to the Zhejiang University and got the admission. Lee at beginning registered as a student in the Department of Chemical Engineering of Zhejiang University, but later transferred to the Department of Physics. During 1943~1944, Lee studied at Zhejiang University. Again disrupted by the Japanese invasion, Lee continued at the National Southwestern Associated University (in Kunming the next year in 1945. Lee went to the University of Chicago in 1946 and completed his PhD with Enrico Fermi.
Lee then worked with collaborators on phase transitions in statistical mechanics and polarons in condensed matter physics. In 1953, he became an assistant professor at Columbia University, and worked mainly in particle physics and field theory. Three years later, at age 29, Lee became the university’s youngest full professor.
Over the years, Lee has pioneered and developed research ranging from symmetry violations in weak interactions to fields of high energy neutrino physics and RHIC physics. He remains an active member of the Columbia faculty and has held its highest academic rank, University Professor, since 1984.
Currently, his interests have turned to the bosonic nature of high Tc superconductivity, the neutrino mapping matrix and new ways to solve the Schrödinger equation.
Soon after the re-establishment of China-American relations with the PRC, Lee and his wife, Hui-Chun Jeannette Chin (pinyin: Qín Huìjūn), were able to go to China, where Lee gave a series of lectures and seminars, and organized the CUSPEA (China-U.S. Physics Examination and Application).
In 1998, Lee established the Chun-Tsung Endowment in memory of his wife, Hui-Chun Chin, who died 3 years earlier. The Chun-Tsung scholarships, supervised by the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia (New York), are awarded to undergraduates, usually in their 2nd or 3rd year, at five universities, which are Fudan University, Lanzhou university, Suzhou University, Beijing University and Taiwan Tsing Hua University. Students selected for such scholarships are named “Chun-Tsung Scholars”.
Chin and Lee were married in 1950 and have two sons: James and Stephen. Lee reads whodunit novels when he does not work on physics. His English given name differs dramatically from the Chinese Romanization systems in use at the time of his childhood, Wade-Giles and Gwoyeu Romatzyh. Tsung-Dao Lee is also known as T.-D. Lee.
Awards:
• Nobel Prize in Physics (1957)
• Albert Einstein Award (1957)
• G. Bude Medal, Collège de France (1969, 1977)
• Galileo Galilei Medal (1979)
• Order of Merit, Grande Ufficiale, Italy (1986)
• Science for Peace Prize (1994)
• China National-International Cooperation Award (1995)
• Naming of Small Planet 3443 as the T.D. Lee Planet (1997)
• New York City Science Award (1997)
• Pope Joannes Paulus Medal (1999)
• Ministero dell’Interno Medal of the Government of Italy (1999)
• New York Academy of Science Award (2000)
• The Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, Japan (2007)
Memberships:
• National Academy of Sciences
• American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• American Philosophical Society
• Academia Sinica
• Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei
• Chinese Academy of Sciences
• Third World Academy of Sciences
• Pontifical Academy of Sciences