2007-9-19

Samuel Chao Chung Ting, the laureate of Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976, wrote an autobiographic article named Under Exploring- Experience of A Physical Scientist in 1980. At the beginning of this article, he cited the poem Problem Solving which was written by Marshal Jianying Ye: 'You, just like fighting a war, can never be afraid of difficulties in studying.
There are definitely difficulties blocking on your way to truth, but you certainly can beat them with hard working.

'As introduced by himself, Samuel was born in USA on January 27th, 1936, and brought back to China by his parents three months after birth. He said, 'I lived a refugee life at that time because of the war state in China. Of course I could not receive any formal education at that time. 'When he was 12 years old, his family moved to Taiwan and he finally got the opportunity to go to high school, therefore, he really treasured his school time. In his high school, Samuel particularly loved the courses of physics and chemistry and scored very good marks in these two subjects. At his graduate album, one of his classmates gave him the parting words as follows, 'You have no match in our class to compete with you in science subjects, however, I hope you can concentrate yourself in science research, and discover several laws named with Chao Chung Ding!' After graduation from high school, Samuel was recommended to the mechanical engineering department of Taiwan Cheng Kung University. In 1956, when he was 20 years old, Samuel went to University of Michigan for further study and received his doctor's degree in physics. Samuel chose experimental physics as his research subject. In 1972, he led a team in Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York to perform a series of experiments to find a new type of heavy particle. He once described the difficulty and complexity of the experiment like this, 'there might be millions of rain drops falling down within one minute to a city like Boston in rain season. If one drop of rain has a different color from others, we must find that drop out; and so shall we do in our experiment.'
After two years of hard working, day and night in his laboratory, Samuel announced to the world on November 12th, 1974 that his team discovered a new particle which was unexpected before, that is, J Particle. This particle, with particular nature of heavy quality and long life, was ascertained to be from the fourth type of quark, which pushed over the existing theory that the world consisted of three types of quark matters, and created another direction for people to recognize the micro world. The discovery, therefore, was named as the November Revolution in Physical Circle.
In autumn of 1977, Samuel visited China. During this period, he proposed to Xiao Ping Deng that the Chinese Academy of Sciences could send some physical scientists to his experimental team for mutual development. In the ten years since he welcomed the first batch of Chinese physical scientists in January, 1978, there were totally hundred of people worked around him. Samuel concluded that, ¡®The cooperation between China and us is satisfactory.' he continued, 'In recent years, the quality of Chinese researchers has been greatly improved, and from leader to ordinary scientist; they are just in a younger tendency. The important discovery of science, especially nature science is now mostly depending on young scientist. Famous scientist like Newton, Faraday, Tsung-Dao Lee, and Chen Ning Yang all announced their important discoveries when they were young; Therefore, I have great confidence for the young scientists in our academy. '