Renowned physicist and Nobel laureate Chen Ning Yang passed away in Beijing on Saturday at the age of 103.

Yang was born in Hefei, east China, in 1922. He entered the National Southwest Associated University in 1938 and obtained his master's degree in science from Tsinghua University in 1944. The following year, he went to the United States as a government-sponsored student, earning his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1948.

After graduation, Yang stayed on at the University of Chicago before joining the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton in 1949, where he became a permanent member in 1952 and a professor in 1955. In 1966, he was appointed Einstein Professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he founded the Institute for Theoretical Physics – now known as the C.N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics – and worked there until 1999.

Yang was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957, together with Tsung-Dao Lee, for proposing the revolutionary concept of parity nonconservation in weak interactions. Their work made them the first Chinese-born scientists to receive the Nobel Prize.

The Yang-Mills gauge theory, introduced by Yang and Robert Mills, laid the foundation for the Standard Model of particle physics and is regarded as one of the cornerstones of modern physics, on par with Maxwell's equations and Einstein's general theory of relativity. Yang also discovered the Yang-Baxter equation in one-dimensional quantum many-body systems, opening new directions in statistical physics and mathematical research.

Throughout his career, Yang made groundbreaking contributions in particle physics, field theory, statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics, profoundly influencing modern science. He was elected an honorary member of more than 10 academies of sciences around the world and received over 20 honorary doctorates, as well as numerous international honors, including the U.S. National Medal of Science, the Franklin Medal, the Onsager Prize, the King Faisal International Prize for Science, the China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award, and the Qiu Shi Lifetime Achievement Award.

Deeply devoted to his homeland, Yang played a key role in advancing China's science and education. His visit to China in 1971 helped inspire a wave of exchanges between Chinese and overseas Chinese scholars, earning him the reputation as a pioneer of academic exchanges between China and the United States. He also helped establish the Committee on Scholarly Communication with China, which supported nearly 100 Chinese scholars in pursuing studies in the U.S. – many of whom later became leaders in China's scientific and technological development.

After returning to China, Yang joined Tsinghua University in 1999, serving as professor and honorary director of the Institute for Advanced Study. Over the past two decades, he dedicated himself to nurturing talent, promoting international academic exchange and strengthening China's basic sciences, leaving a lasting impact on higher education and scientific research in the country. (CGTN)