Samuel Chao Chung Ting (1936-) (丁肇中 pinyin: Dīng Zhàozhōng; Wade-Giles: Ting¹ Chao⁴-chung¹) is a Michigan-born Chinese American physicist who received the Nobel Prize in 1976 for the discovery of the subatomic J particle with Burton Richter.
Because the Ting family (ancestry in Rizhao County (日照縣), Shandong) moved to the warring China when he was an infant, Samuel Ting's formal childhood education had been discontinuous and sporadic, and were mostly home-schooled by his parents: Kuan-hai Ting (丁觀海) and Tsun-ying Jeanne Wang (王雋英), who were China- and US-educated professors -- of science and psychology, respectively -- of the National Taiwan University. His formal education began at 12 at Chien-kuo Middle School (建國中學 Jìanguó) in Taipei, Taiwan, and studied one year in National Cheng Kung University, Tainan City.
When he returned to the USA in his 20s, Samuel Ting studied engineering, mathematics and physics at the University of Michigan. In 1959, he was awarded BSEs in both mathematics and physics, and in 1962 he earned a Doctoral degree in physics. In 1963, he worked in the European Organization for Nuclear Research (now CERN). He later taught in Columbia University, and worked in Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) of Germany. Since 1969, he has been a professor of MIT.
He gave acceptance speech of his Nobel in Mandarin Chinese. Although there had been Chinese recipients before (Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang), none offered speech in any of the Chinese languages until he did. In his speech, he emphasized the importance of experimental work equalling that of theoretical work.
He married Kay Kuhne in 1960, and has two daughters (Jeanne and Amy) from that marriage. Since 1985, he has been married to Dr. Susan Carol Marks, and has one son (Christopher).
