WU,Biao
I was born in Le'an, Jiangxi, China in 1970. It was six years after the explosion of China's first atomic bomb, and two days before China's first satellite circulating the earth. My parents were assigned to different places to work; they had little time to take care of me. Before I was one year old, I was sent to my grandma who lived in a small village in Jiangsu province.
My life in the village was very happy and innocent with my grandma. We had just enough to eat and just enough to keep warm; but we were very happy. There was no radio, no books, and no TV. The mountains on the horizon occasionally reminded me of a big world outside of my village. There was a big portrait on the wall of our small house. I was told that he was Chairman Mao and a great leader. I didn't know what “Chairman”meant and what “great leader” meant at that time. I didn't ask. Frogs in the field were more interesting to me
In 1977, I was back with my parents, and started school. I loved going to school immediately. I had so many kids to play with; the classes were easy for me. My parents were very strict on me and forced me to study three hours every evening. Besides homework, I spent most of these hours reading the math books that my father bought for me. From these books, I learned lots of math beyond my class level, and many interesting stories of famous mathematicians, such as Gauss and Euler. I dreamt to become a mathematician.
However, I majored in physics in college. Because of my excellent performance in high school, I entered college without taking the nationwide college entrance exams. Of course, I wanted to choose math as my major. But, this decision was firmly opposed by my parents who liked me to study biology or medicine. I backed down and chose physics as a compromise. It was a big relief for them, "Ok, physicists can fix radio, and you can make a living on that." While I am already a professor of physics, I still don't know how to fix radio.
I was not very happy about majoring in physics until I met quantum mechanics. I was shocked and fascinated by its "strangeness" and anti-intuition. I spent several months trying to figure out ways to defeat Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation. From then on, I had been a happy physics student. My college life was hardworking and simple. I studied from 6:00pm to midnight every day. The exception was the second semester of my freshman year. A massive student movement broke out in April, 1989. I was there in all the demonstrations and protests. But, I left for home before that terrible tragedy happened on June 4th. I received a telegraph on June 1st, saying my mom was very sick. I rushed home; my mom was very healthy.
In 1992, I entered the Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences, where I swallowed all the advanced physics courses, sharpened my English, and had my first publication.
In 1995, I went abroad and arrived at the University of Texas at Austin to pursue my PhD in physics. It was a totally new and different environment; I struggled quite a while to adjust myself and learn the language. I pulled through, and started publishing papers. I eventually received my PhD in physics in 2001 under the supervision of Prof. Qian Niu. During these years, I met my wife, Yingying. We now have three sons, two of them are a pair of twins.
After nine years in US, I came back in China and became a professor at the Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Since 2010, I have been a professor at Peking University.