Yang Zhenning was born in Hefei, Anhui. When he was in primary school, he got good grades in math and Chinese. Before graduating from high school, he was admitted to the National The National SouthWest Associated University, when he was only 16 years old. After graduating from university at the age of 20, he immediately entered the National Southwest Associated University for postgraduate study. Two years later, he got a master's degree with honors and was allowed to study in the United States at public expense. He went to the United States to study at the University of Chicago on 1945, and received his doctorate on 1948. From 65438 to 0949, Yang Zhenning entered the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies as a postdoctoral fellow and began to cooperate with Li Zhengdao to study particle physics.

Yang Zhenning is a theoretical physicist. His contribution to theoretical physics covers a wide range, including elementary particles, statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics, among which particle physics has the greatest contribution.

In the field of particle physics, his most outstanding contribution is the Young-Mills field theory put forward by/kloc-0 and Mills in 1954, which opened up a new research field of non-Abelian gauge fields and laid a solid foundation for modern gauge field theories, including weak current unified theory, quantum chromodynamics theory, grand unified theory and gravitational field gauge theory.

Another outstanding contribution is that in 1956, he cooperated with Li Zhengdao to deeply study the puzzling mystery of θ-τ at that time, that is, the so-called k meson later decayed in two different ways, one decayed into an even parity state and the other decayed into an odd parity state; If the parity of weak decay processes is conserved, then they must be two K mesons with different parity states. But in terms of mass and lifetime, they should be the same meson.

Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao realized that parity may not be conserved in weak interaction through analysis. They carefully examined all the past experiments and confirmed that these experiments did not prove parity conservation in weak interactions. On this basis, they further put forward several experimental methods to test parity non-conservation in weak interaction. The following year, this theoretical prediction was confirmed by the experiment of Wu Jianxiong's group, and they won the 1957 Nobel Prize in physics.

In particle physics, Yang Zhenning's contributions include: Fermi-Yang model in cooperation with Li Zhengdao, two-component neutrino theory, yoke transformation analysis of charge and time reversal and exchange non-conservation in cooperation with Li Zhengdao and R. O 'Hemei, experimental analysis of high-energy neutrinos in cooperation with Li Zhengdao, and W particle research. Parity conservation analysis cooperates with Wu Dajun, standardizes the theory of field integral form, and standardizes the relationship between field and fiber bundle. High-energy collision theory in cooperation with Zou Zude and so on.