Tai Tsun Wu
Tai Tsun Wu (simplified Chinese: 吴大峻; traditional Chinese: 吳大峻; pinyin: Wú Dàjùn, September 1, 1933) is a Chinese-born American physicist and applied physicist well known for his contributions to high-energy nuclear physics and statistical mechanics.
Born in Shanghai, he studied electrical engineering at University of Minnesota and became a William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition fellow (1953).[1] He obtained an S.M. (1954) and Ph.D. (1956) in applied physics from Harvard University. His thesis concerned I. The Concept of Impedance II. High Frequency Scattering and was advised by Ronold W. P. King.[2] At Harvard, he continued as Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows (1956–59), joined the faculty of applied physics (1959) and is currently the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics & Professor of Physics. Wu has also had visiting appointments with Rockefeller University (1966), at the DESY in Hamburg, Germany (1971), at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and Utrecht University (1977).
He has studied statistical mechanics on Bose–Einstein condensation in an external potential, classical electromagnetic theory (1960). With Hung Cheng, he used gauge quantum field theory to predict the unboundedly increasing total scattering cross sections at very high energies, experimentally verified at CERN and Tevatron collider. Wu studied production processes for the Large Hadron Collider, in particular to predict the production cross section of a Higgs particle with low momentum together with two forward jets. His studies with Chen Ning Yang include CP violation and globalization of the gauge theory.[3] More recently, Wu has studied quantum information processing based on the Schrödinger equation without any spatial dimension in the modeling and application of quantum memories.[4]
Honours & Awards
- Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1977
- Academician of Academia Sinica, Taiwan, 1980
- The Humboldt Prize, 1985
- Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics with Barry M. McCoy and Alexander Zamolodchikov, 1999[5]
Books
- The Scattering and Diffraction of Waves (Harvard University Press, 1959). With Ronold W. P. King.
- The two-dimensional Ising model (Harvard University Press, 1973). With Barry M. McCoy
- Expanding Protons: Scattering at High Energies (MIT Press, 1987). With Hung Cheng
- The Ubiquitous Photon: Helicity Methods for QED and QCD (Oxford University Press, 1990). With Raymond Gastmans
- Lateral Electromagnetic Waves: Theory and Applications to Communications, Geophysical Exploration, and Remote Sensing (Springer-Verlag, 1992). With Ronold W. P. King and Margaret Owens
See also
References
- ^ "Putnam Competition Individual and Team Winners". Mathematical Association of America. Retrieved December 10, 2021.
- ^ Tai Tsun Wu at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- ^ Wu, T. T.; Yang, C. N. (1975). "Concept of non-integrable phase factors and global formulation of gauge fields". Phys. Rev. D. 12 (12): 3845–3857. Bibcode:1975PhRvD..12.3845W. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.12.3845.
- ^ homepage at Harvard University
- ^ "People: 1999 American Physical Society Prizes and Awards". CERN Courier. 39 (2): 35. March 1999.
| International | |
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| National | |
| Academics | |
| People | |
| Other | |
- 1933 births
- Living people
- American nuclear physicists
- People associated with CERN
- Chinese nuclear physicists
- University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering alumni
- Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences alumni
- Harvard University faculty
- Chinese emigrants to the United States
- Writers from Shanghai
- Educators from Shanghai
- Chinese science writers
- Physicists from Shanghai
- Humboldt Research Award recipients
- Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Putnam Fellows