Luke Chia-Liu Yuan

Born in Anyang, Henan, Yuan attended Yenching University in Beijing, the University of California at Berkeley, and the California Institute of Technology. He began living in the United States in 1936. That same year, he attended the University of California, Berkeley and met renowned physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, whom he married in 1942.[2]^:259 She took part in the Manhattan Project and conducted the Wu Experiment which got her the Wolf Prize in Physics. For financial reasons, Yuan transferred to Caltech, where he did his doctoral training under Nobel laureate Robert A. Millikan.[2]^:262

Yuan worked at RCA Laboratories and then Brookhaven National Laboratory as a senior physicist and science educator. In 1958, he was awarded Guggenheim Fellowship for Natural Sciences. He helped found the Synchrotron Radiation Research Center of Taiwan[3] and Wu-Yuan Natural Science Foundation.[4]

For over a year, Yuan was ill and died on February 11, 2003 in Beijing. He is survived by his granddaughter, Jada Yuan (a writer in New York City),[5] son Vincent Yuan (nuclear physicist of New Mexico) and brother Yuan Jiaji of Tianjin.[6] Some of the things that he and his wife had were donated to the Cheng-Shiung Wu Memorial Hall, which is located in Nanjing, China.[7]