Honoring a Legend

May 15, 2026

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The Stony Brook community celebrates the life and lasting impact of C.N. Yang

A speaker addressing an audience at a symposium celebrating C.N. Yang, highlighted on a screen behind him. The presentation features C.N. Yang's name and a portrait, with details about the event organized by the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

Chang Kee Jung, chair, Department of Physics and Astronomy, spoke about Yang’s impact on the field of physics.

On March 12, scientists, friends, colleagues, students and family members gathered at the Charles B. Wang Center Theatre for a symposium, “C.N. Yang and His Impact on Stony Brook,” celebrating C.N. “Frank” Yang’s life and the decades he spent helping transform Stony Brook University into a global center for theoretical physics.

President Andrea Goldsmith opened the symposium by reflecting on Yang’s influence. “He was a faculty leader, he was a visionary, he was a revered friend to so many, and he was a pioneer who chose to come to Stony Brook in its very early days as an entrepreneur to help build up the excellence of this outstanding university,” she said.

Yang arrived at Stony Brook in 1966 from the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, already recognized as one of the world’s most influential physicists. Less than a decade earlier, he and Tsung-Dao Lee had received the Nobel Prize in physics for demonstrating that a fundamental symmetry of nature known as parity does not hold in certain particle interactions. The discovery overturned long-standing assumptions about the laws governing the universe.

A man with gray hair and glasses stands at a podium, speaking into a microphone. He wears a dark brown blazer over a white shirt and a red tie, with a name tag visible on his left side. A screen is blurred in the background.

George Sterman, director, Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics, shared stories about Yang’s role in helping SBU grow by attracting top faculty and students.

Chang Kee Jung, chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, described Yang’s work as foundational to modern particle physics. “Frank Yang’s discovery of parity violation in the weak interaction with T.D. Lee was a paradigm-changing breakthrough that fundamentally altered our view of the universe,” Jung said.

Many speakers said Yang’s most enduring contribution to Stony Brook was the scientific community he built at the university. One of the most consequential relationships Yang developed was his friendship with mathematician Jim Simons, who passed away in 2024. Their conversations helped bridge mathematics and theoretical physics and eventually inspired the creation of the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics.

Yang also used his extraordinary influence to create lasting relationships between China and the United States. As China’s first Nobel laureate and its first renowned scientist to visit China in the early 1970s, he set in motion decades of deep academic partnerships and meaningful friendships — an influence that continues to draw students to SBU today.

Throughout the symposium, speakers returned to a common theme: Yang’s legacy lives on not only in his discoveries but in the people, institutions and ideas he inspired. From the classrooms and laboratories of Stony Brook to the broader scientific world, his influence continues to shape the future of physics.

Top photo: Chang Kee Jung, Mary and Gil Yang (C.N. Yang’s daughter-in-law and son), President Andrea Goldsmith and George Sterman.