Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese-American physicist who specialized in experimental physics and radioactivity, at a time when few women were in the field. She worked on the Manhattan Project, where she helped to develop the process for separating uranium metal into the U-235 and U-238 isotopes by gaseous diffusion. She later performed experiments that helped further our understanding of physics.
She was also the first:
Chinese-American to be elected into the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
Female instructor in the Physics Department of Princeton University
Woman with an honorary doctorate from Princeton University
Female President of the American Physical Society, elected in 1975
Person selected to receive the Wolf Prize in Physics in its inaugural year of 1978.
Her honorary nicknames include the &amp;#8220;First Lady of Physics,&amp;#8221; the &amp;#8220;Chinese Marie Curie,&amp;#8221; and &amp;#8220;Madame Wu.&amp;#8221;