Samuel Chao Chung Ting | Biography

Nuclear physicist Samuel C. C. Ting (born 1936) shared the 1976 Nobel Prize for physics with Burton Richter for discovering the existence of a new particle called j/psi.

Samuel Chao Chung Ting's study of the physics of electron-positron pairs produced during a nuclear reaction led to the discovery of a new particle. This particle, j/psi, supplied nuclear theorists with the key to a suspected fourth quark and opened research into a fourth type of subatomic particle whose existence had until then been speculative. Ting's work during the latter decades of the twentieth century found him involved in what was dubbed "Big Science," experimentation requiring financing by top-notch teams of scientists, expensive state-of-the art equipment, governing boards, and an international approach. Ting was especially suited for work in such a high-pressure environment. An Economist contributor noted in profiling the American physicist that he "is determined to get authoritative results, and demands...
(read more)