I often lecture on famous female scientists and if I do not mention Chien-Shiung Wu, someone almost invariably asks why. This shows how well known she is among scientists. Not only is Wu highly respected-she is known to some as the "First Lady of Phys-ics" or the "Chinese Marie Curie"-but there is a general opinion that it was an injustice that she did not receive the Nobel Prize for Physics together with Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang in 1957 for her part in the experiment that proved that parity is violated in the weak force. But was this really an example of gender discrimination? To find out, I decided to look into this question and weigh up the evidence.
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