Group Members: Leslie Ho, Ritchie Kieu, Michael Lau, Kevin Tse
Yuan Tseh Lee, was born on November 19, 1936 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. His father is an accomplished artist and his mother is a school teacher. Lee was educated in Hsinchu throughout elementary and secondary school. During elementary school he was the second baseman on the school's baseball team and a member of the ping-pong team, who won a little league championship in Taiwan. During high school, he was on the tennis team and played the trombone in the marching band. Lee is a serious reader of a wide variety of books in science literature and socials science. The biography of Madame Curie has made a strong impact on him. Curie's life as a wonderful human being, and her dedication toward science, inspired him to be a scientist. Lee did very well in high school and was accepted into the National Taiwan University - without having to write an exam. He has worked under Professor Hua-Sheng Cheng on his B.S. thesis, which was on the separation of SR and Ba using the papter eletrophoresis method. Lee graduated in 1959, he went on to the National Tsinghua University to do his graduate work. He received his Master's degree on the studies of natural radioisotopes in Hukutolite, a mineral of hot spring sediment with Professor H. Hamaguchi's guidance.He went to the University of California at Berkeley as a graduate student in 1962. He worked under Professor Bruce Mahan for his thesis research on chemiionization processes of electronically excited alkali atoms.
Lee recivied his Ph.D. degree in 1965, he stayed on in Mahan's group and started to work on ion molecule reactive scattering experiments with Ron Gentry using ion beam techniques measuring energy and angular distributions. In February 1967, he joined Professor Dudley Herschbach at Harvard University as a post-doctoral. In October 1968 he has accepted the position as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and the James Franck Institute of the University of Chicago. Finally in 1974, he became an Amercian citizen and he also returned to Berkeley as professor of chemistry and principal investigator at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory of the University of California in the same year.
The designs and experiments of Lee's crossed molecular beam contributed to today's powerful lasers. Lee worked together with Dudley Herchbach at Harvard University on reactions between hydrogen atoms and diatomic alkali molecules, which lead to the construction of a universal crossed molecular beam apparatus. The construction of his new state-of-the-art crossed molecular beam apparatus enabled him to carry out numerous exciting experiments. Also, because of the spectrometer, there were better results, more relations were able to be studied, and the physical dynamics of chemical reactions were better explained. Lee's physical chemistry work used advance chemical kinetic techniques to investigate and manipulate the behavior of chemical reaction for large molecules using crossed molecular beams.
The purpose of Lee's crossed molecular beam experiment was to study the chemical reaction of sodium atoms with oxygen molecules. During the experiment a beam of sodium atoms and a beam of oxygen molecules intersected at a vacuum. The products of the sodium-oxygen reaction were ionized by laser radiation that was aimed at the point of intersection of the two beams, so that the products can be detected and measured by a mass spectrometer. (Mass Spectrometer identifies the chemical composition of a compound)
Lee's crossed molecular beam experiments contributed to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes.
Drawn by Yuan T. Lee, this is his design for the crossed molecular beam experiment.
Microwave Background Anisotropy (AMiBA)
The Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy, or AMiBA, is an instrument for research in cosmology. It is located in Mauna Loa in Hawaii at an elevation of 3400m. It was constructed at that elevation because it took advantage of the atmospheric transparency and minimum radio frequency interference. The AMiBA is made out of a unique hexapod mount, a carbon fiber platform, carbon fiber reflectors, MMIC receivers, a broadband correlator, many electronics, a retractable cover, site infrastructures, and software development. With a sensitivity of ~2 mJy with 1.2m elements an hour, the AMiBA can detect and map 20-50 clusters of galaxies a year. The AMiBA samples structures in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) as small as 2 arc minutes in angular extent. It targets distribution of high red-shift clusters of galaxies via the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Effect, in order to probe the primordial early structure of the universe. By sampling smaller structures, studying the potential presence of the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect on the CMB power spectrum will be possible.
A picture of the AMiBA.
Yuan Tseh Lee in 1974 gained his United States of America citizenship then in 1986 Lee became the winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Lee the father of three children Charlotte a sociologist, Sidney a doctor and Ted a news broadcasting personnel.
Lee has known his wife Bernice Wu Chin-li since elementary school in Hsinchu. After three decades of teaching and researching in the United States Lee returned to his home home province Taiwan, China in January of 1994. Where he became the president of Academia Sinica which is the national academy of the Republic of China. It supports various sorts of research activities, but is mostly related to mathematics, physical sciences, life sciences, and humanities and social sciences. Academica Sinica is directly responsible to the President of the Republic of China, which allows the academy to decide its own research objectives. Academia Sinica consists of six research centers and 25 institutes. Since October of 2006 Lee has retired from his job as of president of Academia Sinica. As of 2006 Lee has earned 32 honorary doctoral degrees and still counting. The degrees were given to him from universities from all around the world.
Heres an interview of Yuan T. Lee, where he talks about his accomplishments and his passion for chemistry.
Yuan Tseh Lee, was born on November 19, 1936 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. His father is an accomplished artist and his mother is a school teacher. Lee was educated in Hsinchu throughout elementary and secondary school. During elementary school he was the second baseman on the school's baseball team and a member of the ping-pong team, who won a little league championship in Taiwan. During high school, he was on the tennis team and played the trombone in the marching band. Lee is a serious reader of a wide variety of books in science literature and socials science. The biography of Madame Curie has made a strong impact on him. Curie's life as a wonderful human being, and her dedication toward science, inspired him to be a scientist. Lee did very well in high school and was accepted into the National Taiwan University - without having to write an exam. He has worked under Professor Hua-Sheng Cheng on his B.S. thesis, which was on the separation of SR and Ba using the papter eletrophoresis method. Lee graduated in 1959, he went on to the National Tsinghua University to do his graduate work. He received his Master's degree on the studies of natural radioisotopes in Hukutolite, a mineral of hot spring sediment with Professor H. Hamaguchi's guidance.He went to the University of California at Berkeley as a graduate student in 1962. He worked under Professor Bruce Mahan for his thesis research on chemiionization processes of electronically excited alkali atoms.Lee recivied his Ph.D. degree in 1965, he stayed on in Mahan's group and started to work on ion molecule reactive scattering experiments with Ron Gentry using ion beam techniques measuring energy and angular distributions. In February 1967, he joined Professor Dudley Herschbach at Harvard University as a post-doctoral. In October 1968 he has accepted the position as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and the James Franck Institute of the University of Chicago. Finally in 1974, he became an Amercian citizen and he also returned to Berkeley as professor of chemistry and principal investigator at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory of the University of California in the same year.
The purpose of Lee's crossed molecular beam experiment was to study the chemical reaction of sodium atoms with oxygen molecules. During the experiment a beam of sodium atoms and a beam of oxygen molecules intersected at a vacuum. The products of the sodium-oxygen reaction were ionized by laser radiation that was aimed at the point of intersection of the two beams, so that the products can be detected and measured by a mass spectrometer. (Mass Spectrometer identifies the chemical composition of a compound)
Lee's crossed molecular beam experiments contributed to the dynamics of chemical elementary processes.
Drawn by Yuan T. Lee, this is his design for the crossed molecular beam experiment.Microwave Background Anisotropy (AMiBA)
The Array for Microwave Background Anisotropy, or AMiBA, is an instrument for research in cosmology. It is located in Mauna Loa in Hawaii at an elevation of 3400m. It was constructed at that elevation because it took advantage of the atmospheric transparency and minimum radio frequency interference. The AMiBA is made out of a unique hexapod mount, a carbon fiber platform, carbon fiber reflectors, MMIC receivers, a broadband correlator, many electronics, a retractable cover, site infrastructures, and software development. With a sensitivity of ~2 mJy with 1.2m elements an hour, the AMiBA can detect and map 20-50 clusters of galaxies a year. The AMiBA samples structures in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) as small as 2 arc minutes in angular extent. It targets distribution of high red-shift clusters of galaxies via the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Effect, in order to probe the primordial early structure of the universe. By sampling smaller structures, studying the potential presence of the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect on the CMB power spectrum will be possible.
A picture of the AMiBA.
Lee has known his wife Bernice Wu Chin-li since elementary school in Hsinchu. After three decades of teaching and researching in the United States Lee returned to his home home province Taiwan, China in January of 1994. Where he became the president of Academia Sinica which is the national academy of the Republic of China. It supports various sorts of research activities, but is mostly related to mathematics, physical sciences, life sciences, and humanities and social sciences. Academica Sinica is directly responsible to the President of the Republic of China, which allows the academy to decide its own research objectives. Academia Sinica consists of six research centers and 25 institutes. Since October of 2006 Lee has retired from his job as of president of Academia Sinica. As of 2006 Lee has earned 32 honorary doctoral degrees and still counting. The degrees were given to him from universities from all around the world.Heres an interview of Yuan T. Lee, where he talks about his accomplishments and his passion for chemistry.
Reference
http://www.asiaa.sinica.edu.tw/about/brochure/_file/brochure_p12.pdf
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1986/lee-bio.html
http://nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=407
http://www.osti.gov/accomplishments/YuanLee_Exp.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academia_Sinica