Hsieh Yu-Ming

Hsieh Yu-Ming (; June 5, 1893 – March 20, 1986), also known as Xie Yuming or Y. M. Hsieh, was a Chinese physicist and educator who contributed to the development of modern physics education in the Republic of China and conducted spectroscopic research that anticipated the discovery of the Lamb shift.

Educated at Columbia University and the University of Chicago under Nobel laureate Albert A. Michelson, Hsieh served as chair of the Physics Department at Yenching University, where he helped establish China's first graduate physics program. During a 1932–1934 fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, he collaborated with William V. Houston on measurements of hydrogen spectral lines that identified discrepancies later explained by quantum electrodynamics. He later taught at Xiamen University during the Second Sino-Japanese War and worked in the Philippines, where he contributed to the country's early atomic energy initiatives. Early life and education Hsieh Yuming was born on June 5, 1893, in Zhixiang Village, Jinjiang, Fujian Province (present-day Shishi City). He lost his father at age four and moved with his mother to Quanzhou, where she supported the family through embroidery and washing work for the local church. who recognized his academic talents and recommended him to Peking Union College (later Yenching University), where tuition was waived due to his family's financial circumstances.

In the early 1920s, Hsieh received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to pursue graduate studies in the United States. He obtained a master's degree from Columbia University in 1924, followed by a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1926 under the supervision of Albert A. Michelson, the 1907 Nobel laureate. Academic career Yenching University (1926–1937) After completing his doctorate, Hsieh returned to China and was appointed professor of physics at Yenching University in Beijing. He became the first Chinese chairman of the Department of Physics, succeeding American physicist Paul A. Anderson. Their measurements revealed discrepancies of approximately 3% between experimental results and theoretical predictions based on the Dirac equation. Significantly, Houston and Hsieh concluded that "the discrepancy may lie in the neglect of the radiation reaction in the calculation of the energy levels," an early identification of what would later be understood as the self-energy correction underlying the Lamb shift. The phenomenon was later definitively measured by Willis Lamb and Robert Retherford in 1947, for which Lamb received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1955. Nobel laureate Yang Chen-Ning later wrote that the Houston-Hsieh work was notable for its prescient identification of quantum electrodynamic effects. Wartime service at Xiamen University (1937–1946) Following the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, Hsieh and his family left Beijing. After briefly teaching at Hunan University, he accepted an invitation in November 1939 from Sa Bendong, president of Xiamen University, to join the institution as professor of physics. Hsieh was appointed to this committee alongside Dr. Theodor Brings (Chairman), Dr. Ciriaco Pedrosa, Dr. Hans Scharpenseel, and Brother Howard Edwards. The commission was chaired by Sir Stanley Lewis Prescott and also included A. F. P. Hulsewé of Leiden University, Chien Shih-liang of National Taiwan University, and William Hung of the Harvard-Yenching Institute.

Personal life Hsieh married twice. His first wife, Guo Yujin, died of typhoid fever while he was studying in America. He later married Zhang Shunying in 1928, a longtime middle school teacher.

Xie Xiwen graduated from Xiamen University and became a professor of materials science at Beihang University.

Xie Xiren (born 1931) graduated from Tsinghua University in 1952 and became a leading communications and computer network expert, serving as professor at PLA Information Engineering University.

Xie Xizhe worked as a senior engineer with the Xinjiang Agricultural Reclamation Bureau.

Hsieh died on March 20, 1986, in Taipei, Taiwan, at the age of 92. Legacy Hsieh was part of the generation of Western-trained Chinese scientists who established modern physics education in China during the Republican era. His work at Yenching University helped train the first generation of Chinese physicists, while his wartime service at Xiamen University preserved physics education during the Japanese occupation. The Houston-Hsieh experiment remains recognized in physics history as an early observation of quantum electrodynamic effects that would later be explained through the Lamb shift. Selected publications