Inspiring dad
Ngo Kien Hung Born in 1912 in Liuhe Town, Taishang City, Jiangsu Province, East China.
That was the time when the feudal system in China was gradually declining and the ideas of reform came rushing in.
According to China Daily, her father, Ngo Trong Due, “absorbed the values of Western ideas while being ‘heavy’ with Chinese cultural ideas that were deeply rooted in the subconscious.” . The father had the most profound influence on Ngo Kien Hung’s life and career.
In 1913, he founded the first school for girls named Minh Duc in Thai Thuong to break the outdated sexist view that “women are incompetent, they are virtue”.
Therefore, from a young age, Ngo Kien Hung was facilitated by his father to access the best education. She attended the No. 2 Women’s Education School in Suzhou, National Central University in Nanjing (later Nanjing University).
After graduating (1934), the young student enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley (USA) to continue studying physics.
Working in a male-dominated scientific world, Ms. Ngo never gives up or lowers her standards, even when treated unequal. Perhaps, it was her father who gave her the motivation and firm faith to keep her on this path.
Challenging common sense
Mrs. Ngo worked at Princeton University (1942-1944) and then Columbia University (1944-1980). She is known for her precision in her work. Physicists at that time often told each other that if the experiment was performed by Mrs. Ngo, it would be absolutely correct.
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Her experiment overturned many previous results and theories, remarked Nobel Prize-winning Chinese-American physicist Dinh Trieu Trung.
In 1956, two theoretical physicists, Theory Chinh Dao and Duong Chan Ninh, consulted Ms. Ngo to conduct an experiment to test their hypothesis about the conservation of parity – a long-standing fundamental principle in physics. quantum science.
Her experiments became a source of ridicule by the great figures in physics at the time.
At the time, most scientists believed that the universe was symmetric (there existed a symmetric version of the universe with a retrograde charge and retrograde time).
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However, the experiment is Sophisticated design by Mrs. Ngo and her associates proved not so. Ms. Ngo observed that in the decay of radioactive cobalt-60, weak interactions and parity were not preserved. The universe, therefore, is asymmetrical.
This “has completely changed our view of the universe,” Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University, said in an interview with CNN.
This success helped her two associates win the Nobel Prize, but Ms. Ngo was not on the list. The Nobel committee received “rain” of criticism for its unfair treatment of her.
In 1964, during a symposium at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she eloquently asked the question “whether tiny atoms and nuclei, or mathematical symbols, or DNA molecules treat favoring men or women?”.
Feminist role model
Ngo Kien Hung has become a role model for Chinese women and girls.
She struggled to overcome barriers around her to be seen and respected at a time when women and Chinese or Asians working in the US were rarely seen.
Ms. Wu repeatedly returned to China and contributed to her homeland.
In 1986, she established a scholarship at Nanjing University (the school she attended) to encourage outstanding students in physics.
In 1992, she established the Ngo Kien Hung Library containing tens of thousands of scholarly books from around the world.
Ms. Ngo also donated all her life savings to reward students and teachers at Minh Duc High School (founded by her father in the past).
Ngo Kien Hung lives a simple life, but devotes himself to his world scientific research and home education.