Threatening to Compete | Her Eternal Smile on US Stamps

When I received a book by airmail, I immediately thought it was sent by a domestic friend, because the portrait of a Chinese woman I saw on the stamp was.

But see clearly, it turned out to be sent from the United States.

When did the USPS use the portrait of a Chinese woman to issue stamps?

Is this a real stamp?

I am not sure who the lady's face is on the stamp.

He is not young, and his smile is a little mysterious, as if the Mona Lisa painted by Da Vinci has added the traces of the years.

Her name is printed on the stamp, which is still the English spelling of the Republic of China.

With her genius in physics, this smiling lady has deciphered the mysteries of the universe.

Her contribution to physics made her the first female physicist in the history of the United States to be issued a stamp by the United States Postal Service, which is not a one-time short-term commemorative stamp, but a long-term use called "eternal stamp" in the United States custom stamps.

This honor is far more rare than the Nobel Prize.

The stamps were originally issued early last year.

Judging from the timing of its release, it was a project proposed, designed, and implemented in the era of Trump’s presidency.

This is a bit strange. In the Trump era, he launched a series of extreme suppression of China, including trade wars, financial wars, technology wars, talent wars, and so on.

During his tenure, many scientists and university professors who had a slight relationship with China were unreasonably suppressed or even arrested.

Trump uttered wild words, saying that graduate students from China can only study humanities such as Shakespeare and not take courses related to science and technology; after the outbreak, the Trump administration has continued to criticize China as the culprit of the epidemic.

His series of operations made Americans' perception of Chinese worse and worse, and the atmosphere of hatred for China was high.

In this context, the US Postal Service even used a Chinese scientist as a portrait of a US stamp, which is especially rare and reflects the extraordinaryness of this female scientist.

Her name is Wu Jianxiong.

The U.S. Postal Service issued an "Eternal Stamp" about Wu Jianxiong last year.

(United States Postal Service)

Under the epidemic, the library of Chinese University was sparsely visited. I buried my information about her in the library of the University of Nuovo. The million avenues outside the window were deserted. A joyful journey.

China has produced many great scientists who changed history.

Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao are so great that people look up to the mountains, Deng Jiaxian is so great and pathetic, Qian Xuesen is so great as a child of the sky, and this Wu Jianxiong is so great and charming.

She studies radioactive particles in the most advanced laboratories in the United States, rewriting the basic laws of physics.

Her experiments overturned the "parity non-conservation" law.

What is "parity non-conservation"?

This science is not easy.

Looking through Chinese and foreign classics, the most incisive explanation I have seen is that her experiments proved that the universe originally knew how to distinguish left and right, rather than bilateral symmetry.

Her experiments also confirmed the theory of Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao.

Many Nobel Prize winners in physics believe that she should win the Nobel Prize like Yang and Li.

Another achievement of hers was her participation in the Manhattan Project to create the atomic bomb, which directly contributed to the successful production of the atomic bomb by the United States, which in turn achieved the early surrender of Japan and reduced human deaths.

Wu Jianxiong is a very disciplined person.

She forgets meals and sleeps on the lab floor when she's busy doing experiments, but makes sure to go to the barbershop every week to get her hair done.

She is beautiful, pure and well-dressed. She is known by the United States as "wearing a cheongsam to make an atomic bomb". It is absolutely natural to fascinate everyone.

When she was still studying in China at the age of 18, her college classmates had already stated that not only a large number of boys were obsessed with her, but even many girls were fascinated by her.

But she will never have any romance. She married in the United States at the age of 30. Her husband is Yuan Shikai's grandson, but she is also a hard-working physics elite.

When she gave birth in the hospital, Einstein visited her.

Like other college students, she was smart and eager to learn since she was a child.

When she was in middle school, she wrote an article, and the teacher's evaluation was: "The pen is as big as a rafter, and the eyes are higher than the top." She graduated from Suzhou Women's Normal School with the highest grades and was recommended to Central University.

At that time, Hu Shi was already the most famous scholar in China, and Wu Jianxiong took one of his subjects.

For a three-hour exam, she handed in the paper in two hours.

After changing the test paper, Hu Shi said to the other two teachers in the faculty room: He has never seen a student who has such a thorough understanding of the 300-year intellectual history of the Qing Dynasty, and gave her 100 points.

Everyone talked about it, it turned out that the other two teachers also gave her a 100 out of 100 in other subjects.

With such outstanding achievements in literature and history, she is even better in mathematics and physics.

In 1936, she was accepted by the University of Michigan as a graduate student. At the age of 24, she embarked on a cruise ship to the United States for further study.

Wu Jianxiong not only made great achievements in physics research, but also has outstanding understanding of Chinese literature and history, which was praised by Hu Shi.

(file picture)

In the United States, on her way to the University of Michigan, she visited a friend at the University of California, Berkeley.

A friend knew Yuan Jialiu from the Department of Physics, so they introduced them to each other.

Yuan Jialiu later became her husband.

Berkeley attracted a group of young and brilliant physicists at the time, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, the host of the Manhattan Project who would later be responsible for building the atomic bomb.

Wu Jianxiong took a quick look and found that Berkeley was very suitable for the radioactive research she wanted to do.

Yuan Jialiu took her to see the dean of the physics department. The school was already open at that time, and the dean of the physics department discriminated against Chinese people and women, but when he saw Wu Jianxiong's genius during the interview, he made an exception to accept her graduate application.

In 1940, she received her Ph.D.

By that time, her research on radioactivity had made her a Berkeley legend, and some called her "China's Marie Curie."

In 1942, Wu Jianxiong taught in the Department of Physics of Columbia University, and Oppenheimer, known as the "Father of the Atomic Bomb" in the United States, was the host of the Manhattan Project. He knew that Wu Jianxiong's talent could help overcome the core difficulties of creating the atomic bomb. Therefore, although Wu Jianxiong did not have American nationality, he also obtained a special confidentiality permit to participate in this highly classified core work of national defense science.

On July 16, 1945, in a desert in New Mexico, the first atomic bomb was successfully tested.

Three weeks later, the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, ending World War II.

Many scientists who participated in the Manhattan Project felt guilty, but when the United States built the atomic bomb, Germany also carried out a similar plan.

If the United States does not complete it first, there is a chance that Nazi Germany will succeed in making an atomic bomb, it will be an even bigger catastrophe.

When someone asked Wu Jianxiong about her atomic bombing, she was always extremely distressed.

But she's optimistic: Do you really think humans can be so foolish as to self-destruct?

Will not.

I have faith in human beings.

I believe that one day we will all live together in peace.

Wu Jianxiong's life is legendary, and some people call her "China's Marie Curie".

(file picture)

In 1971, Yang Zhenning returned to China for the first time to visit relatives.

In 1972, Wu Jianxiong returned to the mainland to visit relatives for the first time after he went to the United States.

In the following years, she returned to China many times, and like Yang Zhenning, she made significant contributions to the scientific development of the country.

Wu Jianxiong passed away in 1997.

According to her will, her husband buried the ashes at Mingde School in her hometown of Taicang, Jiangsu.

The school was founded by her father in the early years, and it is also the place where she studied as a child.

Fallen leaves return to their roots, her cemetery is inscribed by Yang Zhenning, and Li Zhengdao interprets her scientific achievements.

The epitaph said: She is an outstanding citizen of the world, and a Chinese forever.

Yang Zhigang

was a professor of professional application at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and an associate vice president of Hong Kong Baptist University. He is now the vice president of a think tank organization.

For details, please read " Her Eternal Smile on American Stamps " in

Issue 310 of "Hong Kong 01" e-Weekly Newsletter (March 28, 2022)