Wang also led a group which discovered the anti-sigma minus hyperon particle at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia in 1959.

As soon as he arrived in Berlin, he became aware of the Bothe report (博特报告) relating to the emission of a new type of high-energy neutral radiation induced by the bombardment of beryllium with α particles from a radioactive polonium source, which was non-ionizing but even more penetrating than the strongest gamma rays derived from radium.

[5][6] In 1934, Wang Ganchang received his Ph.D. with a thesis on β decay spectrum (German: Über die β-Spektren von ThB+C+C; Chinese:《ThB+C+C的β能谱》) under the supervision of Meitner.

Despite the difficult conditions, he nonetheless tried in 1939 to find evidence of tracks of nuclear fission caused by neutron bombardment of cadmium acid on photographic film.

Instead, fifteen years later in 1956, Frederick Reines and Clyde Cowan detected the neutrino through a different method involving the inverse beta-decay reaction.

Using this technology, the experimental group led by Professor Wang Ganchang in Dubna analysed more than 40,000 photographs which recorded tens of thousands of nuclear interactions taken in the propane bubble chamber produced by a 10 GeV synchrophasotron used to bombard a target forming high energy mesons.

After his return to China in 1958, Wang agreed to participate in the Chinese nuclear program to develop an atomic bomb, which meant giving up his research on elementary particles for the next 17 years.

Within one year he had conducted more than one thousand detonation experiments at the foot of the Great Wall, in the Yanshan Mountains, Huailai county, Hebei province.

This shocked the world since China had not only managed to break the nuclear monopoly of the two superpowers, but had developed this technology even before some major Western powers such as France.

[5][6] That year, as part of his duties as vice-director of the Ninth Research Institute (二机部第九研究院), Wang received the task of conducting China's first underground nuclear test.

In 1964, the Shanghai Optical Machinery Institute (上海光学精密机械研究所) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences developed a high-power 10 MW output laser.

In late December of the same year, Wang proposed to the State Council to use high-power laser beam targeting in order to achieve inertial confinement fusion, an idea simultaneously (but independently) developed by his Soviet counterpart Nikolai Gennadievich Basov.

Unfortunately, due to the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution, which caused seven years of delay, Wang's leading position in this field was lost.

By the end of 1978, his inertial confinement fusion research group established by the Atomic Energy began the construction of a high-current accelerator.

In 1980, he promoted a plan to build 20 nuclear power plants at various locations including Qinshan, Zhejiang Province, Daya Bay, and Guangzhou.

[10] As an ongoing program, it has produced several notable developments including the Loongson computer processor family (originally named Godson), the Tianhe supercomputers, and aspects of the Shenzhou spacecraft.

In September 1999, Wang and Qian Sanqiang jointly received the special prize Two Bombs, One Satellite Meritorious Award for their contributions to the Chinese nuclear program.