List of Chinese Nobel Laureates

Last Updated : 18 Mar, 2024

List of Chinese Nobel Laureates: Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee are the first Chinese Nobel Laureates. They were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957 for their incredible contribution to the field of Physics.

Chen Ning Yang is generally considered the first Chinese Nobel Laureate individually. There are around 12 Chinese (including Chinese-born) who won the Nobel Prize to date.

In this article, we are going to discuss the Chinese Nobel Laureates’ Republic of China (Taiwan), the People’s Republic of China, and those people who have a cultural or ethnic connection to China in detail.

List of Chinese Nobel Laureates – Citizens of the Republic of China (Taiwan)

Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee were the first Chinese Nobel Laureates who were Citizens of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Here are the details tables as mentioned below.

Year	Laureate Name	Born	Place Of Birth	Rationale
1957	Yang Chen-Ning	1922	Hefei, Anhui, China	“For their deep research on the parity laws which led to important discoveries about tiny particles”
1957	Tsung-Dao Lee	1926	Shanghai, China	“For their deep research on the parity laws which led to important discoveries about tiny particles”
1976	Samuel C. C. Ting	1936	Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States	“For leading the discovery of a heavy tiny particle of a new type.”
1986	Yuan T. Lee	1936	Shinchiku City, Shinchiku Prefecture, Japanese Taiwan	“For contributions to understanding how chemicals react and change”.

List of Chinese Nobel Laureates – Citizens of the People’s Republic of China

3 Citizens from the People’s Republic of China are Nobel Laureates. Here are the details tables as mentioned below.

Year	Laureate Name	Born and Death	Place of Birth	Rationale
2010	Liu Xiaobo	1955–2017	Changchun, Jilin, China	“For his long and peaceful fight for basic human rights in China”.
2012	Mo Yan	1955	Gaomi, Shandong, China	“Who mixes old stories, history, and today’s life with vivid details in writing”.
2015	Tu Youyou	1930	Ningbo, Zhejiang, China	“For her discoveries in creating a new treatment for Malaria”.

List of Chinese Nobel Laureates – People Attached With Chinese Diaspora

Here is the list of those Nobel Laureates who are Attached To the Chinese Diaspora. There are six personalities here in this list. Let us discuss.

Year	Laureate Name	Born and Life	Place of Birth	Rationale
1976	Samuel C. C. Ting	1936	Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States	“For pioneering work in finding a new kind of heavy tiny particle.”
1997	Steven Chu	1948	St. Louis, Missouri, United States	“For developing ways to cool and trap atoms using laser light.”
1998	Daniel C. Tsui	1939	Pingdingshan, Henan, China	“For discovering a new type of quantum liquid with parts of electric charges.”
2000	Gao Xingjian	1940	Ganzhou, Jiangxi, China	“For a body of work that’s universally meaningful, with deep insights and creative use of language, which has paved new ways for Chinese literature and drama.”
2008	Roger Y. Tsien	1952–2016	New York City, New York, United States	“For finding and developing the green fluorescent protein, GFP.”
2009	Charles K. Kao	1933–2018	Shanghai, China	“For significant advancements in transmitting light through fibres for optical communication.”

Nobel Laureate 14th Dalai Lama – Tibetan

The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is not a Chinese Nobel winner. He got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for promoting peace and asking for Tibet’s freedom. The Nobel team said his beliefs in peace, respecting all life, taking care of the world, and being ready to solve problems together were important reasons for the award.

Year	Laureate Name	Category	Life	Place of Birth	Rationale
1989	14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso)	Peace	1935–	Taktser, Amdo, Tibet	“For advocating peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people.”

Yang Chen-Ning – 1957

Yang Chen-Ning, also known as C. N. Yang or Frank Yang, is a Chinese scientist born on October 1, 1922. He made big contributions to different areas like math for grouping things, understandable systems, types of physics theories, tiny pieces of matter, and solid matter science.

Yang, along with Tsung-Dao Lee, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957 for their work on changing a law in how tiny pieces interact weakly.
They suggested that a rule in math for tiny pieces, called parity, is not always followed in weak nuclear reactions.
This idea caused big changes in the study of tiny pieces of matter.
Yang is also famous for working with Robert Mills to create a theory about the way tiny pieces interact, known as the Yang–Mills theory.
He has worked on many other theories and projects, including studying tiny pieces of matter with Tsung Dao (T.D.) Lee, studying non-conservation with Tsung Dao (T.D.) Lee and R. Oheme.
He examined how tiny particles that carry electricity interact with Tsung Dao (T.D.) Lee, and studying the non-conservation of a property of tiny particles with Tai Tsun Wu.

Tsung-Dao Lee – 1957

Tsung-Dao Lee, born on November 24, 1926, is a physicist of Chinese-American descent. He is known for his research in various areas such as understanding changes in laws, solving complex mathematical problems, studying tiny particles, exploring advanced physics, researching unique particles in heavy ion physics, studying special types of waves, and examining unusual celestial bodies.

Lee served as a professor at Columbia University in New York City, teaching from 1953 until his retirement in 2012.
In 1957, at the age of 30, Lee, along with Chen Ning Yang, was given the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on discovering differences in the laws of weak forces.
This difference was proven through experiments conducted by Chien-Shiung Wu between 1956 and 1957.
Lee holds the distinction of being the youngest Nobel winner in the field of science after World War II.
He is the third-youngest Nobel winner in science history, following William L. Bragg and Werner Heisenberg, who won the prize at 25 and 30, respectively.
Lee and Yang were the first Chinese winners of the Nobel Prize.
Upon becoming a citizen of the United States in 1962, Lee became the youngest American to have ever won a Nobel Prize.
Lee conducted further research into understanding changes in time, laws, opposite charges, and combined violations following indications of possible law differences.
With the definite experimental confirmation by Chien-Shiung Wu and her team showing that laws were not always the same, Lee and Yang were given the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957.

Samuel C. C. Ting – 1976

Samuel Chao Chung Ting, born on January 27, 1936, is a scientist from America. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976 along with Burton Richter for finding the tiny J/ψ particle.

He led research with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station since 2011.
The Nobel Prize recognized Ting and Richter’s important work in finding a new type of small building block of matter in 1974.
Ting gave his Nobel acceptance speech in Mandarin, marking the first time a Chinese Nobel winner did so.
In his banquet speech, Ting emphasized the importance of hands-on research.

Yuan T. Lee – 1986

Yuan Tseh Lee, born on November 19, 1936, is a chemist from Taiwan. He is currently a Retired Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1986, he became the first Taiwanese Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry.

Lee received the Nobel Prize along with John C. Polanyi and Dudley R. Herschbach for their contributions to understanding how chemical processes work.
Lee’s research mainly focuses on using advanced chemical techniques to study and change how chemical reactions happen.
From January 15, 1994, to October 19, 2006, Lee was the leader of the Academia Sinica of Taiwan.
In 2011, he was chosen to lead the International Council for Science.
Chemistry aims to study how materials change, where the speed of chemical reactions is very important.
Scientists who study chemical reactions look at how fast they happen and how they change over time.
Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius made big steps in understanding how fast reactions happen.
Chemical reactions are basically when atoms and molecules move and change during a collision.
Lee’s research focused on controlling the energy of chemicals, understanding how molecules are positioned affects reactions, and finding out complex reaction steps.
He used a special technique called “crossed molecular beams” to study how chemicals react.
Lee’s work helped me understand how reactions happen better, especially in controlling reaction energy and finding out how reactions work.

Liu Xiaobo – 2010

Liu Xiaobo, born on December 28, 1955, was a Chinese critic, rights advocate, philosopher, and Nobel Peace Prize winner. He advocated for changes in politics and fought against the single-party rule in China. Liu was arrested multiple times and became known as China’s leading dissident and a prominent political prisoner.

In June 2017, he was released on medical parole due to liver cancer and passed away on July 13, 2017.
He gained fame in the 1980s for his critiques of literature and later worked as a visiting scholar at various international universities.
Liu supported the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and was imprisoned several times afterwards for encouraging opposition to state power.
He served as the President of the Independent Chinese PEN Center and led the Democratic China magazine.
Liu was detained in 2008 for signing the Charter 08 manifesto and was formally arrested in 2009.
He was sentenced to eleven years in prison and two years of deprivation of political rights.
Despite his imprisonment, Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010 for his peaceful advocacy of human rights in China.
He was the first Chinese citizen to win a Nobel Prize while in China and the third laureate to receive the prize while incarcerated.
Liu was also the second Nobel laureate to be denied the right to have a representative collect the prize for him and the second to die in custody.
The chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee blamed the Chinese regime for his death, praising Liu’s peaceful resistance against oppression.

Mo Yan – 2012

Guan Moye, also known as Mo Yan, was born on March 5, 1955. He is a Chinese writer who tells stories and writes short tales.

According to Donald Morrison of TIME magazine, Mo Yan is famous, often not allowed, and widely copied among Chinese writers.
Jim Leach compared him to famous writers like Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller.
In 2012, Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his writing style that mixes old stories, history, and modern life with clear details.
His most famous work among Western readers is the 1986 book Red Sorghum, parts of which were made into the award-winning movie Red Sorghum in 1988.
Mo Yan received the International Nonino Prize in Italy in 2005.
In 2009, he became the first person to receive the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature from the University of Oklahoma.

Tu Youyou – 2015

Tu Youyou, born on December 30, 1930, is a Chinese scientist. She discovered artemisinin, a medicine for treating malaria. Artemisinin, also known as qīnghāosù, has saved many lives in regions like South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America.

Tu’s discovery is considered a significant breakthrough in twentieth-century tropical medicine.
For her contribution, Tu received the 2011 Lasker Award in clinical medicine.
Additionally, she was awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with William C. Campbell and Satoshi Ōmura.
Tu is the first Chinese Nobel laureate in physiology or medicine.
She is also the first female citizen of the People’s Republic of China to win a Nobel Prize in any field.
Moreover, Tu is the first Chinese individual to receive the Lasker Award.
Notably, Tu was born, educated, and conducted her research exclusively in China.

First Nobel Laureate – Citizens of the Republic of China (Taiwan)

Yang Chen-Ning and Tsung-Dao Lee are the First Nobel Laureates from Citizens of the Republic of China (Taiwan).

They worked on many other theories and projects, including studying tiny pieces of matter. They examined how tiny particles that carry electricity interact and studied the non-conservation of a property of tiny particles.

First Nobel Laureate – Citizens of the People’s Republic of China

Liu Xiaobo was the First Nobel Laureate from Citizens of People’s Republic of China. He was born on December 28, 1955, and was a Chinese critic, rights advocate, philosopher, and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

He advocated for changes in politics and fought against the single-party rule in China. Liu was arrested multiple times and became known as China’s leading dissident and a prominent political prisoner.

First Lady Nobel Laureate – Citizens of the People’s Republic of China

Tu Youyou, born on December 30, 1930, is a Chinese scientist. She found artemisinin, a medicine for treating malaria. This medicine, also called qīnghāosù, has saved many lives in places such as South China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America.

FAQs – List of Chinese Nobel Laureates

How many Nobel laureates are from China?

Since 1957, there have been 12 Chinese (including Chinese-born) winners of the Nobel Prize. The Nobel Prize is a Sweden-based international monetary prize.

Which country in Asia has the most Nobel laureates?

There are 21 Asians or Asian Americans who have won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Japanese comprise the majority, with 12 laureates.

Who was the first Chinese citizen to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize?

Liu was the first Chinese citizen to be awarded a Nobel Prize of any kind while residing in China, as well being the first ethnically Chinese person of any citizenship to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Why don’t Asians win Nobel Prizes?

Most scientific discoveries have originated from Europe, and Europeans have won 20 times more Nobel Prizes than have Northeast Asians. We argue that this is explained not by IQ, but by interracial personality differences, underpinned by differences in gene distribution.

Which field Cannot win a Nobel Prize?

There is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics because Alfred Nobel did not include it in his will. It is rumored that he had a personal rivalry with a mathematician and chose to exclude the field.

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