FFP EP. 14 | Chen Ning Yang — The Man Who Unlocked Symmetry

Hosted by Lester Nare and Krishna Choudhary, this episode tells the story of Nobel laureate Chen Ning Yang and how his ideas on symmetry and gauge theory transformed modern physics.

Summary

• Early Years & Mentorship: From China to Chicago — learning under Fermi and Chandrasekhar.

• Parity Violation: How Yang & Lee overturned the mirror-symmetry assumption and changed physics forever.

• Gauge Symmetry & Yang-Mills Fields: The foundation of the Standard Model of particle physics.

• Legacy & Philosophy: Why Yang saw beauty as nature’s signature and symmetry as its language.

Show Notes

• Nobel Prize in Physics 1957 — Chen Ning Yang & Tsung-Dao Lee

• Original Yang–Mills Paper (1954, Physical Review)

• Madame Wu’s Parity Violation Experiment (1957)

• Biography of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (University of Chicago)