Samuel C. C. Ting is an American physicist who received the 1976 Nobel Prize for his discovery of the J/psi particle, which led to the detection of many new subatomic particles. Ting shared the prize with Burton Richter , who had made the same discovery almost simultaneously, using a different experimental technique. Ting is known as a confident, daring theorist, as well as a precise experimenter. He is a consummate practitioner of physics in the era of "big science," when research is conducted by large international teams using costly, complex experimental apparatus.

Ting was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on January 27, 1936, while his father, Kuan Hai Ting, was studying engineering at the University of Michigan. He completed his studies when Ting was two months old, and the family returned to mainland China, where his father became an engineering professor. His mother, Tsun-Ying Wang, was a psychology professor. As a...