Chien-Shiung Wu born May 31, 1912 Chien-Shiung Wu is a world reknown physicist whose work helped to destroy a law of nature. Although other scientists proposed the theory, it was Wu's work which disproved the "law of parity", which stated that in reactions, like nuclear particles always act symmetrically. Wu earned her Ph.D. in physics at the University of California-Berkeley. In 1957, she became a full professor at the Columbia University in New York. In 1964, she became the first woman to receive the Comstock Prize from the National Academy of Sciences. She was also the first woman to recieve the Research Corporation Award (1958), and the first to receive an honorary doctor of science degree from Princeton University in New Jersey. In 1958, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.