Wu returned to China (then
Republic of China) after receiving his doctorate degree, and between 1934 and 1949 he taught at various institutions there, including
Peking University in
Beijing, and
National Southwestern Associated University in
Kunming. After the communists defeated the Nationalists in the
Chinese Civil War in 1949, Wu moved to
Canada. There he headed the Theoretical Physics Division of the
National Research Council until 1963. In the 1960s, he was Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the
University at Buffalo. After 1962, he held various positions in Taiwan (
Republic of China), including the President of the
Academia Sinica (1983–1994). He continued lecturing into his 90s and died on 4 March 2000. Wu's PhD dissertation dealt with theoretical predictions of the
chemical properties of the yet undiscovered
transuranic elements of the
actinide series, which includes such well known elements as
plutonium and
americium. Later in his career, he worked on
solid-state physics,
molecular physics,
statistical physics and other areas of
theoretical physics. He was known as a teacher as much as a theoretician. His many illustrious students include
Chen Ning Yang and
Tsung-Dao Lee, co-winners of the
Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957. Wu wrote several books, best known of which are the monograph
Vibrational Spectra and Structure of Polyatomic Molecules (1939) and the graduate level textbooks
Quantum Mechanics (1986) and (as co-author)
Relativistic Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Fields (1991). == Awards and honors ==