Nobel Prize-winning Chinese physicist Chen-Ning Yang dies at 103

Noted Chinese physicist and Nobel Laureate Chen Ning Yang, died in Beijing on Saturday. He was 103 years old.

Yang was born in Hefei, east China's Anhui Province, in 1922. In the 1940s, he went to the United States to pursue academic studies and subsequently held teaching positions. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957, official media here reported.

In 1954, he co-authored a set of equations with the American physicist Robert Mills that turned out to be as important to physics as Einstein's theory of relativity.

The resulting Yang–Mills theory described how three of nature's four fundamental forces – the electromagnetic, weak and strong interactions – operate in the subatomic world, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

Their theory laid the mathematical foundation for what later became known as the Standard Model, the cornerstone of modern physics that unifies these forces and explains the behaviour of all known elementary particles.

“Yang was one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th century,” Shi Yu, professor of physics and associate director of the Wilczek Quantum Centre at the Shanghai Institute for Advanced Studies said.

Without Yang-Mills theory, there would be no Standard Model, she told the Post.

Yang's most profound contribution was changing the mindset of Chinese people who once believed they were not as good as others in science and inspiring future generations to believe they could stand shoulder to shoulder with the world's best scientists, she said.