The Chinese-born American physicist Chen Ning Yang (born 1922) codiscovered the nonconservation of parity in weak interactions.

Academically inclined from childhood Chen Yang was born September 22, 1922, in Hotei, Anhwei, in China, enjoying what he later categorized as "a tranquil childhood that was unfortunately denied most of the Chinese of my generation." His father was a professor of mathematics at Tsinghua University, where Yang came to do post-graduate study after earning his bachelor's degree in 1942.

In 1944 Yang completed his master's degree, after which he taught in a Chinese high school for a time and then traveled to the United States on a fellowship. Determined to benefit from direct contact with Enrico Fermi (the 1938 Nobel laureate who later built the world's first nuclear reactor), Yang enrolled at the University of Chicago in 1946. He completed his doctoral degree in less than two years, his thesis being supervised by Edward Teller.

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