By Weimin Wu
World Scientific
The extraordinary scientific career and personal life of the Chinese-naturalised American physicist Weimin Wu have played out against the backdrop of profound political and cultural changes in China during the last 70 years.
In this autobiography, Wu describes the diverse and colourful events of his life and sketches a portrait of the social environment where they took place. He was personally involved in the making of the first atomic bomb in China, aged just 17, and he participated in the analysis of the data collected by the first artificial Chinese satellite, as well as in the construction of the first electron–positron collider. An e-mail that he sent from Beijing to Switzerland in 1986 is considered to be the first in the history of the internet in China. He was also a member of the research team that observed the first J/ψ particle in Beijing, and of the CMS experiment, where he worked on the search for the Higgs boson.
Not only has he had a remarkable career, his personal life has also been marked by many unusual and stormy events. He had a poor childhood, undertook various jobs as a labourer or a farmer, and was forced to emigrate to the US after becoming personally involved in the Tiananmen Square protest.
The author tells the story of his scientific trajectory and life “on the cusp” with a candid spirit, describing both the events and his inner feelings – details of his emotional experience and love stories add to the book.
