He Zehui

He Zehui or Ho Zah-wei (; March 5, 1914 – June 20, 2011) was a Chinese nuclear physicist who worked with Walther Bothe in Nazi Germany during World War II and with Irène Joliot-Curie in Paris, and later helped develop the Chinese nuclear programme. Her family is famous for producing three renowned women scientists. In addition to He Zehui, her older sister He Yizhen was an authority in spectroscopy and material science, and her younger sister He Zeying was a distinguished botanist. She was the cousin of Wang Ming-Chen. They are both sometimes credited as "The Chinese Madame Curie".

Education He Zehui graduated with a degree in physics from the Tsinghua University in Beijing at the top of her class (which included her future husband Qian Sanqiang) in 1936. At Tsinghua, she enjoyed the protection of Zhou Peiyuan, a close acquaintance of her cousin Wang Shoujing, who is said to have treated her as his sister. With help from her father, who secured a generous scholarship from the Shanxi governor, the warlord Yan Xishan, she went on to study experimental ballistics at the Technische Hochschule zu Berlin. While completing her degree, she stayed in Berlin with Friedrich Paschen, the retired teacher of her supervisor, and was welcomed into his family. where she carried out research into the electroweak interaction.

She maintained a low profile during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). She subsequently turned her attention to cosmic rays and high-energy astrophysics. In 1978, she visited Germany and the CERN, then the US and other countries, working to foster international collaboration.

Awards and honors Throughout her life, she continued to work on high energy physics. She was elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1980. She became an iconic figure in China. The science laboratories at her old school are named in her honour.

Personal life Her husband died in 1992. They had three children, two girls and a boy. Their eldest daughter Qian Zuxuan was a physicist affiliated with the . Their second daughter Qian Minxie is a professor of chemistry at Peking University. Their son Qian Sijin also works for Peking University as a physicist. He Zehui died in Beijing in 2011, at the age of 97.