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By Go Bon Juan
Editor’s Note: The Sixth Dr. Jose P. Rizal
Awards for Excellence awarding ceremony will be held on June 14,
2008, 7 p.m., at the Kaisa-Angelo King Heritage Center on Anda and
Cabildo Streets, Intramuros, Manila.
Of the 11 members of the Philippine Atomic
Energy Commission set up in 1958, one was a Chinese physicist named
Hsieh Yu Ming. Hsieh is mentioned in a Chinese article published in
1961 about Dr. Frank Co Tui, the Father of Philippine Science.
Imagine, as early as 1958, a Chinese physicist
was already working for the atomic energy commission! What a
significant contribution to Philippine atomic science! But who is
Hsieh Yu Ming?
Curious about who Hsieh is, I announced through
Kaisa’s Chinese weekly supplement “Yong Hap” in World News
that we were looking for information about him.
To my surprise, Nelson See, an alumnus of Chiang
Kai Shek College, called the Kaisa office to inform us that Shao
Jian Yin, former Chiang Kai Shek College president and now chairman
of the college’s board, knows Hsieh. Shao, in fact, was Hsieh’s
student in Xiamen University and he eagerly put together reference
materials about Hsieh for Kaisa.
It was only after reading the materials from
Shao that we realized Hsieh Yu Ming’s great contribution to
Philippine science education, especially physics.
Hsieh studied physics at the Yan Jing University
of China. He got his master’s degree in physics from Columbia
University in 1924 and his doctorate from the University of Chicago
in 1926. He returned to China where he taught at his alma mater for
11 years and spent two years teaching in Hunan University. He also
taught at Xiamen University for seven years beginning in 1939.
He came to the Philippines in 1946 and taught at
the University of the East for 18 years. He spent 16 years as dean
of the physics department. Hsieh retired from UE in 1968 and moved
to Taiwan. He passed away in 1986 at the age of 93.
Unknown to many, Hsieh was a heavyweight
physicist. As early as 1933, he co-wrote with W.V. Houston an
article on the study of spectrum of the hydrogen atom with very
accurate testing results, which was published in Physical Review.
More than a decade later, the study resulted in
the development of “heavy hydrogen.” Its discovery won the Nobel
Prize in physics for W.E. Lamb and P. Kusch in 1955 for their 1946
to 1947 experiment, and for S. Tomonaga, J. Schwinger, and R.P.
Feynman in 1965 for their theoretical work.
Unfortunately, Hsieh’s great study was not
recognized when it was first presented because of the confusion
arising from several other experiments being made at the time. His
contribution to atomic physics was acknowledged in 1985 and
propagated only years later by another Nobel Prize winner in physics
(1957), Dr. Yang Chen Ning.
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