Wu Tayou
2 min readWu Tayou（27 September 1907-4 March 2000）was a Chinese-born atomic and nuclear theoretical physicist.He has been called the“Father of Chinese Physics”.
Wu was born into a family of scholars in Panyu，Guangzhou.In 1929 he took his undergraduate degree at Nankai University in Tianjin.Later，he moved to the United States for graduate schooling and took a Doctor of Philosophy Degree from the University of Michigan in 1933.In 1934，Dr.Wu returned to China，and between 1934and 1949 he taught at various institutions there，including Peking University in Beijing and National Southwestern Associated University in Kunming.In 1938 in Kunming，during the most difficult war time，he managed to write the first book on molecular spectroscopy，Vibrational Spectra and Structure of Polyatomic Molecules.In 1949，the year of the defeat of the Communists over the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War，Wu went to Canada.There he headed the Theoretical Physics Division of the National Research Council until 1963.In the late 1960s，he was chair of the department of Physics and Astronomy at the University at Buffalo.In 1962，Dr.Wu was appointed Director of the Institute of Physics of Academia Sinica in Taiwan.
Wu’s Ph.D.dissertation dealt with theoretical predictions of the chemical properties of the yet undiscovered transuranic elements of the actinide series，which include such well known elements as plutonium and americium.Later，he worked on solid-state physics，molecular physics，statistical physics and other areas of theoretical physics.
Ta-You Wu is deeply respected for his honesty，integrity and moral courage.He has inspired four generations of physics students，in prewar Peking，wartime Kunming，the postwar United States and Taiwan.
He was known as a teacher as much as a theoretician.His many illustrious students include Chen Ning Yang and Tsung-Dao Lee，co-winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957.
Dr.Wu wrote several books，best known of which are the monograph Vibrational Spectra and Structure of Polyatomic Molecules（1939）and the graduate level textbooks Quantum Mechanics（1986）and（as co-author）Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Fields（1991）.He has published over 120 papers in a wide range of areas in modern and classical physics.
