Yuan T. Lee, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Dudley Herschbach and John C. Polanyi for their work in the field of chemical kinetics, also called reaction dynamics. Herschbach and Lee worked together on their study of what happens when individual particles of matter collide and chemically change. Lee's major contribution to the prize-winning effort was to improve the instruments. Before Lee worked on the apparatus, Herschbach's research was very limited in scope. With the changes Lee made, the equipment could be used to study almost any chemical change. The new apparatus is so useful it is described as a "universal" machine, and a laboratory "workhorse" by colleagues at the University of California.

Yuan Tseh Lee was born in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on November 29, 1936. Lee's father was an artist and art teacher; his mother taught elementary school. When the...