Yuan Tseh Lee
Yuan Tseh Lee (Chinese: 李遠哲 Pinyin: Lǐ Yuǎnzhé, Wade-Giles: Li³ Yüan³-che²) (born November 19, 1936) is a famous chemist. He was the first Taiwanese-born Nobel Prize laureate, who, along with with the Hungarian-Canadian John C. Polanyi and American Dudley R. Herschbach won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1986 "for their contributions to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes." Lee's particular work was on crossed molecular beams further towards its use for general reactions, a method for the study of important reactions for relatively large molecules. Since January 15, 1994, Lee has been the President of the Academia Sinica of the Republic of China.
Of Fujianese ancestry (specifically, Rongqiao Village (榕橋村), Nan'an County (南安縣), Quanzhou City), Lee was born in Hsinchu City in northern Taiwan to Li Tze-fan (李澤藩 Lǐ Zéfán), an accomplished Hsinchu-born artist, and Ts'ai P'ei (蔡配 Cài Péi), an elementary school teacher from Wuchi Township (梧棲鎮), Taichung County. Lee played on the baseball and ping-pong teams of Hsinchu Elementary School (新竹國小), and later studied at the Hsinchu Senior High School (竹中), where he played tennis and trombone. Due to his achievements in high school, he entered National Taiwan University without taking the entrance examination and earned a B.S. in 1959. He earned a M.S. at National Tsing Hua University in 1961 and Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in 1965.
In February 1967, he started working with Dudley Herschbach at Harvard University on reactions between hydrogen atoms and diatomic alkali molecules and the construction of a universal crossed molecular beams apparatus. In 1974, he returned to Berkeley as professor of chemistry and principal investigator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, becoming an American citizen the same year. At Berkeley, Lee retains the title of Professor of the Graduate School Emeritus. He is also University Professor Emeritus of the University of California system.
Yuan T. Lee played an important role during the 2000 ROC Presidential election. On the last week of the election he announced his support for the candidacy of Chen Shui-bian who subsequently won a narrow victory over James Soong.
Lee's endorsement of Chen was not without controversy. Lee's participation in politics was verbally attacked by novelist Li Ao, a presidential candidate during the aforementioned 2000 election. Li criticized Lee as "filled with hypocrisy" (「充滿偽善」) by claiming to be a scholar who pursues neutrality and truth, yet ignoring the black gold activity, which Li claims that Chen Shui-bian engaged in as the mayor of Taipei. Later on, Li Ao also published a book entitled The True Face of Yuan Tseh Lee(李远哲的真面目), denouncing Lee to be a "scholar-tyrant" and oppressing academic freedom.
Li's opinion is in the minority, however. In general, the Taiwanese people are quite proud of their sole Nobelist. Lee has been the President of the Academia Sinica for the past ten years. During his tenure, Lee has worked tirelessly to create new research institutes, advance scientific research within Taiwan, and to recruit and cultivate top scholars for the Academic Sinica.
At the request of ROC politicians, Lee was the Chinese Taipei's representative in the 2002 APEC leaders' summit in Mexico. (Presidents of the Republic of China have been barred from joining the APEC summits because of objections from Beijing.) Lee represented President Chen again in 2003's APEC summit in Thailand.
With Bernice Wu Chin-li (吳錦麗 Wú Jǐnlì), whom Lee has known since elementary school, he has 3 children: Ted (news broadcasting personnel), Sidney (doctor), and Charlotte (sociologist).  Lee with wife and daughter (1986).
Lee was one of the four Nobelists who established the Wu Chien-Shiung Foundation. In addition to the Nobel Prize, his awards and distinctions include Sloan Fellow (1969); Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1975); Fellow Am. Phys. Soc. (1976); Guggenheim Fellow (1977); Member National Academy of Sciences (1979); Member Academia Sinica (1980); E.O. Lawrence Award (1981); Miller Professor, Berkeley (1981); Fairchild Distinguished Scholar (1983); Harrison Howe Award (1983); Peter Debye Award (1986); National Medal of Science (1986).
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Referenced By
Academia Sinica | Academia Sinica (Taiwan) | Academia Sinica in Taiwan
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