Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu was born on May 31, 1912 in Liu Ho, China, a town that is about 30 miles away from Shanghai. Her parents believed very strongly in the assessment of a good education, and encouraged their daughter in her educational pursuits. Going against the traditional ideas of the day, Chien-Shiung's parents enrolled her in a school that they had started, which then, only went through the fourth grade. In 1922, Chien-Shiung went to boarding school in Suzhou and graduated at the top of her class in 1930. She was then accepted to the prestigious National Central University of Nanking in 1936, and after graduating from there, made her way to the United States to pursue graduate studies. She originally planned to attend the University of Michigan once she arrived to the U.S., but, for a variety of reasons enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley, instead.

While at U.C. Berkeley, Chien-Shiung studied physics under professor Ernest O. Lawrence, received her Ph.D in 1940, and became widely known as an expert on nuclear fission. Two years later, she married Luke Yuan, a Chinese physicist and former classmate from U.C. Berkeley. The two then moved to the east coast, where he worked on radar at Priceton, New Jersey, and she taught at Smith College in Massachusetts. They met on weekends, in New York City. During WWII, Chien-Shiung worked at Columbia University on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, and after the war, stayed at Columbia as a research scientist. In 1956, two physicists, Tsung Dao Lee, and Chen Ning Yang proposed that parity was not conserved for weak interactions. Dr. Wu tested the proposal by observing the beta particles given of by cobalt-60. She observed that there is a preferred direction of emmission, and that therefore, parity was not conserved for this weak interaction. In other words, Dr. Wu was able to prove that identicle nuclear particles do not always act alike, and, thereby, disprove, what was then, a widely accepted "law" of nature!

For the discovery that the law of parity was not conserved, both Lee and Yang won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics, but to the disappointment of many, Dr. Wu was not included. Even though she did not recieve the Nobel Prize, she was given many other honors and awards. She was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and recieved the Medal of Science in 1975. She also became the first woman ever to be awarded an honorary doctorate from Princeton University. Dr. Wu continued to teach at Columbia University, and continued to conduct nuclear research and taught until her retirment in 1981. After her retirement, she lectured widely and encouraged the participation of young women in scientific careers. Known as the "First Lady of Physics," Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu did the seemingly impossible and disproved a law of nature.