"Many physicists recall October 1957 as a time of excitement and legend. In that year, at the age of 35, Yang won the Nobel Prize in Physics. Yang and Lee thereby became the first Chinese laureates. The significance of the award lay not only in the academic achievement, but also in the boost it provided to the self-belief of a nation. Before that, the scientific talent of the Chinese had been questioned. Ching-Wu Chu, a distinguished physicist specialized in superconductivity and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, was in high school at the time. He spent his spare time reading every news report he could find about Yang, and talked earnestly to his classmates about “parity non-conservation” – a subject on which they could understand nothing. Tsu-Teh Chou, a professor of physics at the University of Georgia, was dining at a tiny Chinese restaurant in Liverpool, England, 12 years later, and overheard both the chef and the owner talking proudly about Yang’s achievements."