Wang Ming-chen (pinyin: Wáng Míngzhēn, November 18, 1906 – August 28, 2010[1]) was a Chinese theoretical physicist and a professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing.
[1][8] Wang was born into a large prominent family in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province on November 18, 1906 (or the 3rd day of the 10th month of year Bingwu / the 32nd year of Guangxu in the Qing dynasty of the Chinese Lunar Calendar)[2][1][3] Her siblings include several renowned Chinese scientists, physicians, and engineers, who pursued western education in the early 1900s.
[2][3] According to her own autobiography, after missing two scholarship opportunities from Barbour Scholars, the University of Michigan and Sino-British Boxer Indemnity Scholarship to study physics abroad because she was unable to afford the transportation and gender discrimination,[3] she eventually arrived at the US to study theoretical physics at the University of Michigan in 1938, under another application of Barbour Scholars.
[10][11] She received her PhD in 1942 in the University of Michigan and published several papers in the area of statistical mechanics with George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit.
[3][2][5] James L. Lawson and Uhlenbeck also acknowledged Wang in the preface of Threshold Signals, a book from the MIT Radiation Laboratory Series, which published the researches of the lab.
After the Cultural Revolution ended, the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party announced that Wang and Yu's arrest was completely unjust and was due to political persecution by Jiang Qing, then Mao's wife and a member of the Gang of Four.