Chien-Shiung Wu. Historical portrait of Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu (1912-1997). Born in China, Wu moved to the USA in 1936, becoming a physics professor at Columbia University, New York, in 1957. In 1956, Wu and Tsung-Dao Lee experimentally confirmed a theory that parity is violated during weak radioactive decay, overturning many basic assumptions of particle physics. Wu experimentally confirmed other particle theories, as well as studying muonic atom X-ray spectra.