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Professor Samuel C.C. Ting

Professor Samuel C.C. Ting was born in 1936 in Michigan, USA. He obtained his BSE in physics and mathematics and his PhD in physics from the University of Michigan in 1959 and 1962 respectively.

In 1963, Professor Ting worked at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. He became an instructor at Columbia University in 1964. In 1969, he was appointed Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He was selected the first recipient of the Thomas Dudley Cabot Institute Professorship at MIT in 1977. He now works at the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science.

In 1974, Professor Ting discovered in very precise experiments a new particle that he called the J-particle, the first of a new class of heavy, long-lived mesons. The discovery of this particle confirmed the existence of a fourth quark, or “charm”. He was then awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1976 for his “pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind”. Since then, the fifth and sixth quarks have been found. These quarks are the basic constituents of matter. Professor Ting currently leads a large-scale experiment to look for antimatter in space.

Professor Ting is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the US National Academy of Sciences. He is also a foreign member of the Hungarian, Chinese, Pakistani, Russian, and Spanish academies of sciences and Academia Sinica of Taiwan. He has received honorary doctorates from the University of Michigan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the University of Bologna, Columbia University, the University of Science and Technology of China, the Moscow State University, the University of Bucharest, Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, the Hong Kong Baptist University, RWTH Aachen University of German, Central University in Taiwan, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.