She is the first female Chinese physicist working on statistical mechanics. Her paper with Uhlenbeck about Brownian motion is still a classic in the field. She is the sister of S. C. Wang.
1906 born in a prominent family in Jiangsu Province, China
1926-1928 Jinling Women College, Nanjing (Jinling is the ancient name of Nanjing or Nanking, the "South Capital")
1928-1932 BS. and MS. in Physics at Yanjing University, which was a prestigious university in China but was dissolved in 1952 during the Chinese national university reorganization movement.
1932-1938 teach at Jinling Women College (The school moved westwards after Japan openly invaded China and sacked Nanjing in 1937.)
1938-1942 PhD in Physics at University of Michigan, working with Samuel Abraham Goudsmit and George Eugene Uhlenbeck.
1943-1945 research scientist at MIT working on Radar
1947-1949 professor at Yunnan University, China
1949-1952 research scientist at University of Notre Dam working with Eugene Guth
1953-1955 resigned from University of Notre Dam and tried to go back to China after the Korean War
1955- professor at Tsinghua University
1968-1973 in prison during the Culture Revolution
2010 passed away at Beijing
Publications
Goudsmit and Wang, Introduction to the Problem of the Isochronous Hairspring, J. Appl. Phys. 11, 806, (1940)
Wang and Uhlenbeck, On the Theory of the Brownian Motion II, Rev. Mod. Phys. 17, 323, (1945)
Wang and Guth, Statistical Theory of Networks of Non‐Gaussian Flexible Chains, J. Chem. Phys. 20, 1144, (1952)
Autobiography (in Chinese), Ming Chen Wang, 90 years in a flash (转瞬九十载), 物理(physics), 2006, 35(03): 0-0.
Anecdotes from her autobiography:
Because Wang was the only non-Christian student in her class of the middle school, which was a church school in China, the principal, who was a devout Christian lady, sadly talked to Wang with tears:"Although you have excellent scores and your name has been carved on the cup, you can't enter the Heaven since you are not a believer." The teenager Wang replied: "I can't lie to you because I truly don't believe."
Despite ranking the 1st in the scholarship exam at Yanjing University for study in the US, the Chairman You Xun Wu, who is also a prominent physicist, said to the committee: "Isn't it a waste of money to send a female student to study physics abroad? It would be better to send the boy ranking the 2nd." (Eventually, Wang missed this opportunity, but got another scholarship from UMich a few years later. Please be advised that, this (1930s) was the era when Chinese women were still forced to wrap their feet to satisfy the distorted aesthetic standard in a patriarchal society.)
Regarding to the fact that she was harassed by FBI during the McCarthyism period but still remained free, and was later imprisoned for six years in China during the Culture Revolution, Wang commented:"In fact, I was not taken into prison abroad, but was imprisoned in China instead."
During her stay in prison, the guards made her read Karl Marx's Capital. Wang recalled: "I worked through all the mathematical derivations in Capital in my mind, for I don't have access to paper and pen."