Daniel C. Tsui

Daniel Chee Tsui (, born February 28, 1939) is an American physicist. He is currently serving as the Professor of Electrical Engineering, emeritus, at Princeton University. Tsui's areas of research include electrical properties of thin films and microstructures of semiconductors and solid-state physics.

Tsui won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics with Robert B. Laughlin and Horst L. Störmer "for their discovery of a new form of quantum fluid with fractionally charged excitations."

Early Life and Education Tsui was born into a Chinese agricultural family with two illiterate parents in Fanzhuang (Henan) , Baofeng, Henan, Republic of China, on February 28, 1939. Born in the midst of Second World War, Tsui described his early childhood memories as being "filled with the years of drought, flood and war which were constantly on the consciousness of the inhabitants of my over-populated village."

In 1951, Tsui left for Hong Kong to attend Pui Ching Middle School in Kowloon, beginning his formal education at the level of sixth grade in his second year in Hong Kong. Tsui recalled facing difficulties due to his lack of familiarity with Cantonese dialect used. He remarked that due to the influence of prominent Chinese theoretical physicists and Nobel laureates C. N. Yang and T. D. Lee, both of whom studied at the University of Chicago, he had always known that he wanted to pursue graduate studies in physics at the institution.

Career After receiving his Ph.D. and then remaining in Chicago for a year of postdoctoral research, Tsui joined the research staff at Bell Laboratories to perform research in solid state physics in 1968. At Bell Laboratories, instead of studying mainstream topics of interest in semiconductor physics such as optics and high energy band-structures or their applications in devices, Tsui devoted his attention to a new field called the physics of two-dimensional electrons.

He was also an adjunct senior research scientist in the physics department of Columbia University, and a research professor at Boston University.

Tsui is one of the 20 American recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics to sign a letter addressed to President George W. Bush in May 2008, urging him to "reverse the damage done to basic science research in the Fiscal Year 2008 Omnibus Appropriations Bill" by requesting additional emergency funding for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

As of 2022, Tsui is among only three of Chinese Nobel laureates who voiced their support for Ukraine.

Personal life While a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Tsui met Linda Varland, who was an undergraduate student there at the time, and the two married after the latter's graduation. Tsui is a naturalized U.S. citizen. Tsui and Varland have two daughters, Aileen and Judith. Judith graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with a B.A. in anthropology in 1991 and is now an associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

Awards and honors Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize, 1984 Fellow of the American Physical Society, elected 1985 Member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, elected 1987 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, elected 1991 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics, 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics, 1998 Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected 2000 Member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, elected 2004 Foreign Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, elected 2000 Academician of Academia Sinica, Taipei