送交者: morningstar 于 July 01, 2003 06:06:54:
回答: 李政道：杨振宁索取根本不属于他的荣誉 由 霍林河 于 July 01, 2003 00:33:15:
HLH,
I have seen this article appearing in many places in the last few days. It has also been distributed to the CUSPEA mailing list. I found the article very interesting from two aspects. It is a very systematic description on the history of Yang-Lee collaboration for the first time, from Lee's side. There are many details that have never been disclosed before. It is clearly intended as a public response to the recent Biography of C.N. Yang by Jiang CaiJie. The other interesting aspect is that fact this article is communicated to the outside from Beida. Given the fact that Yang's close association with Tsinghua University, I am afraid that this may also indicate the competition between the two universities and their public feud of who is No. 1 in China.
I have had several personal contact with T.D. Lee over the years. He has my highest admiration as a physicist and as a person. His devotion to China and the amount of effort he spend in helping China and Chinese scientists are enormous. The well known CUSPEA program took enormous amount of his and his wife's time. Just yesterday, there were also discussions on Hong Qiao Forum where people described how important a role Lee's World Laboratory has played in supporting young physicists - some testified that without them, they would not have stayed in physics.
C.N. Yang has done no less, in different ways. He has promoted China in US to the degree that attracted hatred from extreme groups from Taiwan. His love for China and Chinese culture is unparalleled amongst the well known Chinese scientists. He is deeply rooted in Chinese culture as a result of his upbringing. Although I have never had the chance to meet him personally, I have been enjoying very much reading some of his scientific articles as well as his writings. His style of physics has been established in earlier days - beautiful presentation with mathematical clarity and deep appreciations to symmetry and underlying fundamental concepts. Yang's contribution in statistical physics and field theory places him amongst masters of modern physics. People has compared him with Dirac.
Now come back to the well known tragic relations between Yang and Lee. Their description of events are surprisingly similar but the interpretations are very different. To me this is seeing the same thing from different angle - like the two sides of a coin. They were good friends from the beginning - but each of them are very competitive and certainly would like to make his own marks in physics. I don't doubt that Yang helped Lee in the earlier days - that is his nature. But the collaboration must have evolved over the years into an equal partnership with complimentary quality. Yang is very mathematical and would like to see the deep meaning of things. He has both breath and depth. Lee, on the other hand, is very intuitive and very quick to learn. He can appreciate new things much faster. Together they formed a dream team and made eatrordinary contributions to physics.
In my view, their tragidy is part of human nature. Although they were good friends and collaborators, they have held back to each other some of the inner thoughts about motivations and fame. They also perhaps did not tell each other the whole story at the begining of each of the collaboration - the most important being the work on parity. I believe this is the origin of their split. Each did not see from the perspective of the other. Each believed only his side of the story. Once this started, it quickly spun out of control to a point of no return.
It is truly a dark side of a otherwise brilliant and successful collaboration of two genius. I agree with you that Lee's description of the two brothers on the beach perhaps already captured the essence of this tragedy. Let's pray that one day that the two brother will come together and embrace each other again. What is more improtant to me is what they have done and continue to do for physics and for China, not so much what they have said or not said about each other.