Ting, Samuel Chao Chung

(1936– ) US physicist: discovered the J/psi particle.

Ting had an unusual upbringing, he was born in the USA but educated in China and Taiwan, and finally at the University of Michigan (1956–62). His work in elementary-particle physics began at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva (CERN) and Columbia University, where he became an associate professor at 29. He also led a research group at DESY, the German synchrotron project in Hamburg, and from 1967 worked at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Ting conducted an experiment at the Brookhaven National Laboratory synchrotron in which protons were directed onto a beryllium target, and long-lived product particles were observed (1974). This newly discovered particle was named the J particle; it was observed at the same time and independently by at Stanford, who called it the psi particle. It is now known as the J/psi particle. Soon, other related particles of the J/psi family were detected, and Ting and Richter shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1976.