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  • Title: Chien-Shiung Wu, the “first lady of physics”
  • Location: New York, NY
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Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997) was a Chinese-American experimental physicist who made significant contributions in the field of nuclear physics. Chinese-American nuclear physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, also known as "the First Lady of Physics,” contributed to the Manhattan Project and made history with an experiment that disproved the hypothetical law of conservation of parity. Wu worked on the Manhattan Project, where she helped develop the process for separating uranium into uranium-235 and uranium-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. After being promoted to Associate (1952) and then to Full Professor (1958) and becoming the first woman to hold a tenured faculty position in the physics department at Columbia, she was appointed the first Michael I. Pupin Professor of Physics in 1973. She was a huge advocate for promoting girls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and lectured widely to support this cause becoming a role model for young women scientists everywhere.