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10 - Untangling Entanglement History: Early Quantum Contributions of Chien-Shiung Wu

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2025

Patrick Charbonneau
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina
Margriet van der Heijden
Affiliation:
Eindhoven University of Technology
Daniela Monaldi
Affiliation:
York University, Toronto
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Summary

Chien-Shiung Wu (1912–1997) is often referred to as “the Chinese Marie Curie” even though she conducted most of her research in the US. She is best known for her discovery of the non-conservation of parity for weakly interacting particles – a finding for which she is widely regarded as having been passed over for the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics. Seven years earlier, though, in a one-page letter to Physical Review, Wu and her graduate student also quietly reported what has come to be understood as the first conclusive evidence of entangled photons. Twenty years later, as quantum foundations research emerged from shadow, Wu revisited her 1949 experiment with a more refined approach. Wu shared the new results with Stuart Freedman, a collaborator of John Clauser. Clauser et al. would rigorously critique Wu’s experiments through at least 1978. In 2022, the Nobel Committee honored Clauser, Alain Aspect, and Anton Zeilinger, each of whom had produced increasingly convincing proof of entanglement beginning in the 1970s. Wu’s foundational work from almost seventy years earlier, however, was not mentioned. This chapter aims to help bring Wu’s entangled photons back into the light.

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Women in the History of Quantum Physics
Beyond <i>Knabenphysik</i>
, pp. 277 - 308
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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