Named in honor of Wu Chien-Shiung, born in China and currently Pupin Professor Emerita at Columbia University. She is renowned for her work in nuclear physics, particularly in the experimental study of the beta decay of radioactive atomic nuclei. The precision and elegance of her experiments have earned her the title of greatest living woman physicist. With coworkers she made her most famous contribution in 1956 with a critical experiment on polarized cobalt-60 beta decay. The result of this work, which substantiated the theory of Lee and Yang, shocked the world of physics and overthrew the concept of parity conservation in weak interactions. (M 16040) _ _.