Hu Ning

Professor Hu Ning (Traditional Chinese: 胡寧; Simplified Chinese: 胡宁) (1916–1997) was a famous theoretical physicist and educator in China.

Hu was born in Suqian, Jiangsu province, China on 11 February 1916. From 1928 to 1934, Hu studied at the Zhenjiang High School (镇江中学) in Zhenjiang, and the Suzhou High School (苏州中学) in Suzhou. In 1935, Hu studied at the physical department of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. From 1935 to 1937, Hu studied in the department of physics at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he graduated in 1938.

After his graduation from Tsinghua, Hu became the teaching assistant for his professor Zhou Peiyuan in the department of physics.

In 1940, Hu examed and won the Boxer Rebellion Indemnity Scholarship Program. In 1941, Hu went to study in the United States. Hu studied fluid mechanics at the California Institute of Technology. His doctoral advisor was Theodore von Kármán. Hu also studied quantum mechanics under Paul Sophus Epstein during this period. Hu obtained his PhD in 1943 from Caltech.

From 1944 to 1945, Hu stayed at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and studied quantum field theory and basic particles theories under Wolfgang Pauli. From 1946 to 1949, Hu visited Europe. He visited the research institute of high energy physics in Dublin, Ireland, and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen. Hu went back to the United States, and from 1949 to 1950, Hu did research at the nuclear physics department of the Cornell University, New York.