Chen Ning Yang — A Life Chronicle

An animated chronicle of Chen Ning Yang (杨振宁, 1922–2025): physicist, 1957 Nobel laureate, co-author of Yang–Mills gauge theory, and one of the most consequential Chinese scientists of the 20th century.

Forked from the Sean Xiang chronicle template by Koutian Wu. Built as a companion to the long-form essay "How Rich Is Chen Ning Yang? His wealth and the science of scientific privilege" and its 6 supporting data figures.

Related work

• Long-form essay (English): https://ktwu01.github.io/posts/2026/05/yang-zhenning-wealth-questions/
• Long-form essay (中文): https://ktwu01.github.io/zh/posts/2026/05/yang-zhenning-wealth-questions/
• Reproducible figures repo: https://github.com/ktwu01/yang-zhenning-wealth-figures
• Chronicle blog post (this site's narrative companion): https://ktwu01.github.io/posts/2026/05/yang-zhenning-chronicle/

Scope

The chronicle covers four overlapping arcs:

1. Family and early years (1922–1937). Hefei birth; Tsinghua faculty compound childhood; father Yang Wuzhi (China's first PhD in number theory, 1928 Chicago) and his academic network.
2. War and Southwest Associated University (1937–1945). Kunming; undergraduate under Wu Dayou; master's under Wang Zhuxi; mentorship overlap with S.S. Chern.
3. United States (1945–1965). Boxer Indemnity scholarship; Chicago PhD under Edward Teller; Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton; collaboration with T.D. Lee; 1956 parity non-conservation paper; 1957 Nobel.
4. Stony Brook and the return to China (1965–2025). Albert Einstein Professorship; Yang–Mills theory; CUHK affiliation; 1997 return to Tsinghua; founding the Tsinghua Institute for Advanced Study; passing on 18 October 2025.

What's in this repo

• index.html — animated chronicle landing page (TimelineJS + StoryMap + custom UI).
• data/ — JSON-driven content: chapters, timeline, locations, sources, exhibits.
• research/ — research dossier and timeline tables (markdown).

Customization Guide (template provenance)

This repo is a fork of the Sean Xiang chronicle template. Other forks built from the same template:

• daniella-rempe-chronicle (ut01)
• ashley-matheny-chronicle (ut01)
• gengchen-mai-chronicle (ut01)
• marc-hesse-chronicle (ut01)
• geeta-persad-chronicle (ut01)
• kehan-dong-chronicle (ut01)
• koutian-wu-chronicle (ut01)
• juan-santiago-chronicle (qijiang-yoyo)
• zong-liang-yang-chronicle (ktwugoat)
• Eric-Greene-chronicle (yzliu03)

Testing locally

python -m http.server 8000

Then visit http://localhost:8000.

License

MIT, inherited from the upstream template.