Yang Liming (Chinese:杨立铭; 5 February 1919 – 12 January 2003), also known asLi-Ming Yang, was a Chinesetheoretical physicist and professor atPeking University. A doctoral student of the Nobel laureateMax Born, he made contributions to the research ofnuclear shell structure,many-body theory, and theinteracting boson model. He was elected an academician of theChinese Academy of Sciences in 1991, together with his wife, computer scientistXia Peisu.
Yang was born on 5 February 1919 inLishui County,Jiangsu, Republic of China.[1] When he was in high school, theSecond Sino-Japanese War broke out and Lishui was occupied by theImperial Japanese Army. Yang became a war refugee and fled across China, finally arriving inSichuan half a year later. There he completed his secondary education at National No. 2 High School ofHechuan and enteredNational Central University, then exiled inChongqing, in 1938. After graduating four years later with a degree in mechanics, he worked at Central Mechanics Factory inKunming for a year, before returning to National Central University as an assistant professor.[1]
In 1944, Yang passed the government examination for study abroad, and was sent to the United Kingdom in 1945, where he worked and trained atRenold Works. In 1946,Max Born accepted him as a graduate student at theUniversity of Edinburgh. Yang earned his Ph.D. intheoretical physics in just two years, and continued to conductpostdoctoral research under Born afterwards. He published six papers in the field, including "Nuclear Shell Structure and Nuclear Density" which explains the recently discoveredmagic numbers fornucleons.[1][2]
Two years after the founding of thePeople's Republic of China, Yang and his wifeXia Peisu returned to China in 1951.[3] They both became faculty members atTsinghua University, although Yang was soon transferred toPeking University during Communist China's reorganization of higher education on the Soviet model in 1952. At Peking University he served as associate professor, professor, and later doctoral advisor. In the late 1950s, he andYu Min co-authored a textbook on the theories of nuclear physics.[1]
Starting in the late 1950s, Yang advancedmany-body theory incondensed matter physics, which was pioneered byKeith Brueckner. In the 1970s, he conducted research and proposed new theories for theinteracting boson model (IBM). In 1985, he taught as a visiting professor atYale University on the invitation ofFrancesco Iachello, a co-inventor of IBM. He taught at theTechnical University of Munich in 1986, and collaborated withAkito Arima, the other co-inventor of IBM in Japan.[1]
Over a teaching career spanning more than four decades, Yang educated a large number of students, including more than 30 doctoral and master's students.[1] In 1991, Yang Liming and his wife Xia Peisu were both elected as academicians of theChinese Academy of Sciences.[4][5]
In 1945, Yang metXia Peisu, an alumna of National Central University. They married in 1950, when they were both studying at the University of Edinburgh.[6] She later became a pioneering computer scientist, acclaimed as the "mother of computer science" in China. The couple had two sons, Yang Yuenian and Yang Yuemin. The children followed the footsteps of their parents: Yuenian became a computer scientist, and Yuemin a physicist.[3]
Yang died on 12 January 2003, aged 83.[7]
