Chien-Shiung Wu:
The First Lady of Physics
"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, in 1936, 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.
(Madame Wu Chien-Shiung: The First Lady of Physics Research)
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 J. Robert Oppenheimer and Emilio Segre at UC
Berkeley's International House (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.
The Oakland Tribune, 1941
Wu graduated from Berkeley in 1940 (China Daily)
"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)
"I got to know this graduate student in this idle time. She used the same room next door, and was called 'Gee Gee (her nickname at Berkeley)'. She was the most talented and most beautiful experimental physicist I have ever met.” (Luis Alvarez)
In 1942, Chien-Shiung Wu married Luke Yuan in a ceremony at the home of Yuan's advisor and Caltech’s president, Robert Millikan.
Wedding of Wu Chien-Shiung and Luke Yuan (World War II Database)