Yang Chen Ning Quotes

In 1956 two American physicists, Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, suggested that the weak force does not in fact obey the symmetry P.

Nature seems to take advantage of the simple mathematical representations of the symmetry laws. When one pauses to consider the elegance and the beautiful perfection of the mathematical reasoning involved and contrast it with the complex and far-reaching physical consequences, a deep sense of respect for the power of the symmetry laws never fails to develop.

The question was heatedly debated of how much Western culture should be brought into China.

It was not just joy. There was something more, something deeper: After all, what could be more mysterious, what could be more awe-inspiring, than to find that the structure of the physical world is intimately tied to the deep mathematical concepts, concepts which were developed out of considerations rooted only in logic and the beauty of form?

Physics is not mathematics, just as mathematics is not physics. Somehow nature chooses only a subset of the very beautiful and complex and intricate mathematics that mathematicians develop, and that precise subset is what the theoretical physicist is trying to look for.