Professor Chen Ning Yang, an eminent contemporary physicist, was Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, from 1955 to 1966, and Albert Einstein Professor of Physics at the State University of New York at Stony Brook until his retirement in 1999. He has been Distinguished Professor-at-Large at the Chinese University of Hong Kong since 1986 and Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, since 1998.

Since receiving his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1948, Prof Yang has made great impacts in both abstract theory and phenomenological analysis in modern physics. In 1983, he published “Selected Papers (1945–1980), With Commentary”. It has been considered by Freeman Dyson as one of his favorite books. The present book is a sequel to that earlier volume. It is a collection of his personally selected papers (1971–2012) supplemented by his insightful commentaries. Its contents reflect Professor Yang's changing interests after he reached age sixty. It also includes commentaries written by him in 2011 when he is 89 years old.

The papers and commentaries in this unique collection comprise a remarkable personal and professional chronicle, shedding light on both the intellectual development of a great physicist and on the nature of scientific inquiry.

Contents:Speech About the Great WallC N Yang Discusses Physics in People's Republic of ChinaA de Gaulle-Like TripCondition of Self-Duality for SU(2) Gauge Fields on Euclidean Four-Dimensional SpaceGeneralization of Dirac's Monopole to SU₂ Gauge FieldsEinstein and the Physics of the FutureDoes Violation of Microscopic Time-Reversal Invariance Lead to the Possibility of Entropy Decrease?Joseph Mayer and Statistical MechanicsFlux Quantization, A Personal ReminiscenceThe Discrete Symmetries P, T and CGauge Fields, Electromagnetism and the Bohm-Aharonov EffectSpin of Electrons, Hadrons and NucleiHermann Weyl's Contribution to PhysicsSquare Root of Minus One, Complex Phases and Erwin SchrödingerGeneralization of Sturm-Liouville Theory to a System of Ordinary Differential Equations with Dirac Type SpectrumC Y Chao, Pair Creation and Pair AnnihilationA One-Dimensional N Fermion Problem with Factorized S MatrixJourney Through Statistical MechanicsModern Physics and Warm FriendshipSO₄ Symmetry in a Hubbard ModelSymmetry and PhysicsS S Chern and IReflections on the Development of Theoretical PhysicsDeng JiaxianJulian SchwingerPath Crossings with Lars OnsagerExact Solution of the Vibration Problem for the Carbon-60 MoleculeFather and ISpeech After BanquetWriteup Upon Hearing of Mills' DeathEnrico FermiWerner Heisenberg (1901–1976)Banquet Speech, June 2002Thematic Melodies of Twentieth Century Theoretical Physics: Quantization, Symmetry and Phase FactorGauge Invariance and InteractionsAlbert Einstein: Opportunity and PerceptionThe Klein-Nishina Formula & Quantum ElectrodynamicsPseudopotential Method and Dilute Hard “Sphere” Bose Gas in Dimensions 2, 4 and 5Ground State of Fermions in a 1D Trap with δ Function InteractionBanquet Speech at the Singapore Conference in Honour of Murray Gell-Mann on His 80th BirthdaySpin 1/2 Fermions in 1D Harmonic Trap with Repulsive Delta Function Interparticle InteractionOne-Dimensional ω-Component Fermions and Bosons with Repulsive Delta Function InteractionQuantum Numbers, Chern Classes, and a BodhisattvaMy Experience as a Student and ResearcherFermi's β-Decay TheoryTopology and Gauge Theory in PhysicsOn Reaching Age NinetyReadership: Graduate students and researchers in particle physics and statistical physics.

Chen Ning Yang

Books