3 ms·

Same, Marie Curie is by far much more recognized/contributed to nuclear physics... She was the first woman to win Nobel, (and won it twice)

ISL 6y ago
Measuring parity violation is one heck of a thing. Wu is less of a household name, but within fundamental physics, her experiment is one of the great milestones.
input_sh 6y ago
For context, only four people won Nobel twice (Frederick Sanger, Linus Pauling, John Bardeen and Marie Curie), and from that list, her is the only name I recognise.
- OskarS 6y ago
  She's also the only one of them who won in two different scientific disciplines: physics and chemistry. Linus Pauling (who was pretty famous to a previous generation, though maybe not quite as famous as Curie) won also won in two different disciplines, but one of them was the peace prize.
- evanb 6y ago
  If you’re on this website you may be interested to learn that Bardeen won for inventing the transistor. (His other prize was for explaining super conductivity; he won for experimental work and separately for theoretical work!) Bardeen didn’t bring his young children to the Nobel award ceremony the first time. The King asked him where they were and jokingly said Bardeen had ought to bring them next time. And so he did!
- webmaven 6y ago
  Other than Curie, I recognized Pauling, though admittedly more from his obsessive crackpot advocacy for taking massive doses of vitamin C. https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7547741/vitamin-c-myth-pauling https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7547741/vitamin-c-myth-pauling
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  RB Woodward won the 1965 Chemistry Nobel Prize for his astounding achievements in total synthesis. Some people say that he should have been awarded a part of the 1973 prize that went to Fischer and Wilkinson for sandwich compounds, and he definitively would have received it again in 1981 together with Fukui and Hoffmann for explaining how orbitals influence stereochemistry.

ISL 6y ago

Measuring parity violation is one heck of a thing. Wu is less of a household name, but within fundamental physics, her experiment is one of the great milestones.

input_sh 6y ago

For context, only four people won Nobel twice (Frederick Sanger, Linus Pauling, John Bardeen and Marie Curie), and from that list, her is the only name I recognise.

OskarS 6y ago
She's also the only one of them who won in two different scientific disciplines: physics and chemistry. Linus Pauling (who was pretty famous to a previous generation, though maybe not quite as famous as Curie) won also won in two different disciplines, but one of them was the peace prize.
evanb 6y ago
If you’re on this website you may be interested to learn that Bardeen won for inventing the transistor. (His other prize was for explaining super conductivity; he won for experimental work and separately for theoretical work!) Bardeen didn’t bring his young children to the Nobel award ceremony the first time. The King asked him where they were and jokingly said Bardeen had ought to bring them next time. And so he did!
webmaven 6y ago
Other than Curie, I recognized Pauling, though admittedly more from his obsessive crackpot advocacy for taking massive doses of vitamin C. https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7547741/vitamin-c-myth-pauling https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7547741/vitamin-c-myth-pauling
HarryHirsch 6y ago
RB Woodward won the 1965 Chemistry Nobel Prize for his astounding achievements in total synthesis. Some people say that he should have been awarded a part of the 1973 prize that went to Fischer and Wilkinson for sandwich compounds, and he definitively would have received it again in 1981 together with Fukui and Hoffmann for explaining how orbitals influence stereochemistry.