Chien-Shiung Wu:
Crossing the Frontier of Experimental Physics
United States
"Women were not granted full and equal access to the Michigan Union until 1968. For many years, women were allowed in only through a side door and when escorted by a man." (Alumni Association of the University of Michigan)
Front entrance of the Michigan Union building (Michigan Union)
Planning to study at the University of Michigan, Wu's ship arrived in San Francisco. She visited UC Berkeley, and after touring the radiation lab and hearing about women being unallowed to use the front entrance of UM, she decided to study at Berkeley instead.
Wu at Emilio Segre's house in Berkeley, 1938 (Madame Wu Chien-Shiung: The First Lady of Physics Research)
Berkeley
The Radiation Laboratory, Berkeley
Raymond Birge (The Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley)
Wu met fellow Chinese physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan at Berkeley, who introduced her to Raymond Birge, head of the physics department. Birge was impressed by Wu's talents and agreed to allow her to enroll in graduate school despite the academic year already being in session.
Ernest Lawrence (Atomic Archive)
"Wu studied nuclear physics at the University of California, Berkeley where she was advised by leading physicist, Ernest Lawrence. She worked in Lawrence’s Radiation Laboratory and got the chance to learn from physicists like Lawrence himself, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and other students who went on to become experimental physicists." (National Women's History Museum)
Wu with her advisor Emilio Segre (Center) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (front) at UC Berkeley's International House in the late 1930s (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)
After her first year at UC Berkeley, Wu applied for a scholarship. But due to prejudice against Asian students, Wu and Yuan were instead offered a lower stipend, causing Yuan to apply for a scholarship at Caltech.
Postdoctoral
"She would make any laboratory shine!" (Ernest Lawrence)
Wu graduated from Berkeley in 1940 (China Daily)
After graduation, Wu was unable to obtain a faculty position at Berkeley despite Lawrence and Segrè's recommendations. She continued to work at the Radiation Laboratory as a post-doctoral fellow.
"She wanted to stay at Berkeley after completion of her Ph.D., but at that time major research-oriented U.S. universities were reluctant to hire women, Jews, Asians, or people of color in a tenure-track professorial position." (National Academy of Sciences)
"In a laboratory where science is smashing atoms, a petite Chinese girl works on even terms with some of America's top-notch physicists...To strangers she appears shy and reticent. But before an audience of physicists and advanced students she if confident, incisive." (The Oakland Tribune)
The Oakland Tribune, 1941
"Her extreme and meticulous attitude as an experimental physicist won her a reputation of excellence from fellow physicists, who said of her 'If the experiment was done by Wu, it must be correct.'" (Harvard University)
Wedding of Wu Chien-Shiung and Luke Yuan (World War II Database)
In 1942, Chien-Shiung Wu married Luke Yuan in a ceremony at the home of Yuan's advisor and Caltech’s president, Robert Millikan. After the wedding, the couple moved to the East Coast where Luke obtained a position at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey.