Believe It or Not, He’s
Eighty
13 November
2006
Dr. Tsung-Dao
Lee (left): Let's be the best
matchmakers, shall we?
Dr Lee is chatting with China’s
maestro artist Wu Guanzhong (吴冠中)
The happily grinning man on
the left in the photo has turned 80. Can
you believe that?
He’s
undoubtedly a Longevity Star (老寿星). And he’s not just any
other LS, but the world renowned
scientist. The fact that he looks so
young and so energetic may have something
to do with him being a top expert on high
energy neutrino physics – just a
guess. But what is certain is, yes, he’s
Dr. Tsung-Dao Lee (Li Zhengdao 李政道), the chief architect of
the solvable model of quantum field
theory, known as the Lee Model, and
the 1957 Nobel Price winner in physics.
Born and
grew up in Shanghai, he is, like maestro
architect I. M. Pei, a Suzhou native. So
it makes sense that at the party
organised by Tsinghua University on
Saturday celebrating his 80th birthday,
the maestro scientist talked about
symmetry violation science in the art of
the scenic windows on the buildings and
verandas of the Suzhou gardens.
The
traditional Chinese culture, as Dr. Lee
has observed, uses artistic presentation
to express the essence of science and
philosophy, and pursues a harmonious
state of union between science, arts and
philosophy. It is, he believes, also the
very objective of the modern science and
arts.
To start
with, as one of today’s foremost and
pioneering scientists in the world, his
knowledge of and understanding about the
ancient Chinese culture is outstanding.
So is his artistic comprehension. In this
regard, he is in the best position to
bring an inter-disciplines dialogue
between the science and the arts, the
modern and the tradition, the Western
culture and the Eastern civilisation, and
to create a blending base for them.
(Original
photo by 王嘉宁)
China
stories are told at wenhousecrafts.com
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