Samuel C.C. Ting The Nobel Prize in Physics 1976

Autobiography

Early Background

Samuel C.C. Ting was born on 27 January 1936 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA., where his parents, Professor K.H. Ting and Professor T.Y. (Jeanne) Wang Ting, were students at the University of Michigan. His family returned to China a few months later.

Education

Ting received his elementary and secondary education in China, during the 1936-1956 period. He excelled in mathematics, science and history. In 1956, Ting returned to the United States to attend the University of Michigan as an engineering student, but he soon transferred his major to physics.

Higher Education

1959: Awarded BSE (in physics) and BSE (in mathematics) from the University of Michigan

1962: Awarded Ph.D. (in physics) from the University of Michigan.

Academic and Research Position
In 1963, Ting was granted a Ford Foundation Fellowship to work at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. He returned to the United States in 1964 to become an instructor at Columbia University in New York. In 1966, he became the leader of an experimental group at the Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron in Hamburg, Germany. In 1969, he was appointed Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts and in 1977 he was selected as the first recipient of the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professorship at MIT.

Major Awards

Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1975

Member of Academia Sinica, Taiwan, in 1975

Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award by the U.S. Government in 1976

Nobel Prize in Physics awarded in 1976

Member of the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1977

Thomas Dudley Cabot Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1977

The Eringen Medal awarded by the Society of Engineering Science in 1977

Foreign Member of the Pakistani Academy of Sciences in 1984

DeGasperi Award in Science, by the Government of Italy in 1988

Golden Leopard Award for Excellence, by the town of Taormina, Italy, in 1988

Gold Medal for Science by the city of Brescia, Italy, 1988

Foreign Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences in 1989

Foreign Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1993

Foreign Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1994

Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1995

Member Deutsche Akademie Der Naturforscher Leopoldina in 1996

NASA Public Service Award, USA, in 2001.

Doctor Honoris Causa

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, U.S.A., 1978

Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1987

University of Bologna, Italy, 1988

Columbia University, New York, U.S.A., 1990

University of Science and Technology, China, 1990

Moscow State University, Moscow, 1991

University of Bucharest, Romania, 1993

Tsing Hua University, Taiwan, 2002

National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan, 2003.

1936 Born, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA

1936-1956 Early education in China. Returned to the United States in 1956 to attend the University of Michigan.

1959 BSE (physics and mathematics), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

1962 Ph.D. in physics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

1963 Ford Fellow at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland

1965 Instructor, Columbia University, New York

1966 Group Leader, Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY), Hamburg

1969 Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

1970 Associate Editor, Nuclear Physics B.

1975 Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences

1975 Foreign Member, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.

1976 Recipient of Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the U.S. Government

1976 Nobel Prize in Physics

1977 Member of the Editorial Board, Nuclear Instruments and Methods

1977 Member, National Academy of Sciences, U.S.A.

1977 Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor, M.I.T., Cambridge

1977 Eringen Medal, Society of Engineering Science

1978 Sc.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

1980 Member of the Editorial Board, Mathematical Modeling

1984 Foreign Member, Pakistani Academy of Sciences

1987 Dr. Honoris Causa, Chinese University of Hong Kong

1988 DeGasperi Award in Science, by the Government of Italy

1988 Golden Leopard Award for Excellence, Taormina, Italy

1988 Gold Medal for Science, Brescia, Italy

1988 Dr. Honoris Causa, University of Bologna, Italy

1989 Foreign Member, Soviet Academy of Sciences

1990 Dr. Honoris Causa, Columbia University, New York, USA

1990 Dr. Honoris Causa,, University of Science and Technology, China

1991 Dr. Honoris Causa, State University of Moscow, USSR

1993 Dr. Honoris Causa, University of Bucharest, Romania

1993 Foreign Member, Hungarian Academy of Sciences

1994 Foreign Member, Chinese Academy of Sciences

1995 Foreign Member, Russian Academy of Sciences

1996 Member Deutsche Akademie Der Naturforscher Leopoldina, Halle, Germany

2001 NASA Public Service Medal.

2002 Dr. Honoris Causa,, Tsing Hua University, Taiwan

2003 Dr. Honoris Causa, National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan.

I was born on 27 January 1936 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the first of three children of Kuan Hai Ting, a professor of engineering, and Tsun-Ying Wang, a professor of psychology. My parents had hoped that I would be born in China, but as I was born prematurely while they were visiting the United States, by accident of birth I became an American citizen. Two months after my birth we returned to China. Owing to wartime conditions I did not have a traditional education until I was twelve. Nevertheless, my parents were always associated with universities, and I thus had the opportunity of meeting the many accomplished scholars who often visited us. Perhaps because of this early infiuence I have always had the desire to be associated with university life. Since both my parents were working, I was brought up by my maternal grandmother. My maternal grandfather lost his life during the first Chinese Revolution. After that, at the age of thirty-three, my grandmother decided to go to school, became a teacher, and brought my mother up alone. When I was young I often heard stories from my mother and grandmother recalling the difficult lives they had during that turbulent period and the efforts they made to provide my mother with a good education. Both of them were daring, original, and determined people, and they have left an indelible impression on me. When I was twenty years old I decided to return to the United States for a better education. My parents' friend, G.G. Brown, Dean of the School of Engineering, University of Michigan, told my parents I would be welcome to stay with him and his family. At that time I knew very little English and had no idea of the cost of living in the United States. In China, I had read that many American students go through college on their own resources. I informed my parents that I would do likewise. I arrived at the Detroit airport on 6 September 1956 with $100, which at the time seemed more than adequate. I was somewhat frightened, did not know anyone, and communication was difficult. Since I depended on scholarships for my education, I had to work very hard to keep them. Somehow, I managed to obtain degrees in both mathematics and physics from the University of Michigan in three years, and completed my Ph.D. degree in physics under Drs. L.W. Jones and M.L. Perl in 1962. I went to the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) as a Ford Foundation Fellow. There I had the good fortune to work with Giuseppe Cocconi at the Proton Synchrotron, and I learned a lot of physics from him. He always had a simple way of viewing a complicated problem, did experiments with great care, and impressed me deeply.

In the spring of 1965 I returned to the United States to teach at Columbia University. In those years the Columbia Physics Department was a very stimulating place, and I had the opportunity of watching people such as L. Lederman, T.D. Lee, I.I. Rabi, M. Schwarts, J. Steinberger, C.S. Wu, and others. They all had their own individual style and extremely good taste in physics. I benefitted greatly from my short stay at Columbia. In my second year at Columbia there was an experiment done at the Cambridge Electron Accelerator on electron-positron pair production by photon collision with a nuclear target. It seemed to show a violation of quantum electrodynamics. I studied this experiment in detail and decided to duplicate it. I contacted G. Weber and W. Jentschke of the Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY) about the possibility of doing a pair production experiment at Hamburg. They were very enthusiastic and encouraged me to begin right away. In March 1966 I took leave from Columbia University to perform this experiment in Hamburg. Since that time I have devoted all my efforts to the physics of electron or muon pairs, investigating quantum electrodynamics, production and decay of photon-like particles, and searching for new particles which decay to electron or muon pairs. These types of experiments are characterized by the need for a high-intensity incident flux, for high rejection against a large number of unwanted background events, and at the same time the need for a detector with good mass resolution.

In order to search for new particles at a higher mass, I brought my group back to the United States in 1971 and started an experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In the fall of 1974 we found evidence of a new, totally unpredicted, heavy particle - the J particle. Since then a whole family of new particles has been found.

In 1969 I joined the Physics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In 1977, I was appointed as the first Thomas Dudley Cabot Institute Professor of Physics at MIT. In recent years it has been my privilege to be associated with M. Deutsch, A.G. Hill, H. Feshbach, W. Jentschke, H. Schopper and G. Weber. All have strongly supported me. In addition, I have enjoyed working with many very outstanding young physicists such as U. Becker, J. Burger, M. Chen, R. Marshall and A.J.S. Smith. I married Dr. Susan Marks in 1985. We have one son, Christopher, born in 1986 and I have two daughters, Jeanne and Amy, from an earlier marriage.

I have been awarded the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the US government in 1976 and the DeGasperi Award in Science from the Italian government in 1988. I have also received the Eringen Medal awarded by the Society of Engineering Science in 1977, the Golden Leopard Award for Excellence from the town of Taormina, Italy in 1988 and the Gold Medal for Science and Peace from the city of Brescia, Italy in 1988. I am a member of the National Academy of Sciences (US) and the American Physical Society, the Italian Physical Society and the European Physical Society. I have also been elected as a foreign member in Academia Sinica, the Pakistan Academy of Science and the Academy of Science of the USSR (now Russian Academy of Science). I also hold Doctor Honoris Causa degrees from the University of Michigan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Columbia University, the University of Bologna, Moscow State University and the University of Science and Technology in China and am an honorary professor at Jiatong University in Shanghai, China.