Chien-Shiung Wu is perhaps the most respected female physicist in America. She was instrumental in the research that earned two of her colleagues, Dr. Tsung Dao Lee and Dr. Ning Yang, the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Wu was born in Shanghai in 1915 and was raised in the nearby town of Liu Ho. Her father, Zong-Yee Wu, was the principal of the local elementary school, and he brought to his children a love of books, knowledge, and the arts; he also recognized the changes in the political and social landscape of China and prepared his children for them. Chien-Shiung went to high school in Soochow, where she studied English and science and decided to become a physicist. After graduation she enrolled at the National Central University, a government-funded school at Nanking. She received her B.S. in physics in 1936.

Once she had graduated from the National Central University, Wu...