A Mini-bio of Biao Wu

                                                    From a village boy to a physics-doer

I was born in Le'an, Jiangxi, China  on April 22, in 1970.  It was two  years after the explosion of China's first atomic bomb, and two days  before China's first satellite circulating in space.  My parents were  assigned to different  places to work; they had little time to take care of me. Before I was 1 year old, I was sent to my grandma who lives in a small village in Jiangsu province.

My life was very happy and innocent with my grandma. We had just  enough to eat and just enough to keep warm; but we were very happy. There was no radio, no TV and no books. The mountains on the horizon  were the only thing I knew outside of my village. There was a big portrait on the wall of our small house. I was told that he was Chairman Mao and a great leader. I didn't know what Chairman meant and what "great leader" meant  at that time; I didn't ask. Frogs in the field were more interesting to me.

In 1977, I was back with my parents,and started school. I loved  going to school immediately. I had so many kids to play with; the classes were easy for me. My parents were very strict on me and forced me to study  three hours every evening. Besides homework, I spent most of these hours reading the math books that my father bought for me. From these books, I  learned lots of math beyond my class level, and many interesting stories of famous mathematicians, such as Gauss and Euler. I dreamt to become a mathematician.

However, I majored in physics  in college. Because of my excellent performance in high school, I entered college without taking the nationwide college entrance exams. Of course, I wanted to choose math as my major.  But, this decision was firmly opposed by my parents who liked me to study biology  or medicine.  I backed down and choose physics as a compromise. It was a big relief for them, "OK, physicists can fix radio, and you can make a living on that." While I'm getting my PhD in physics, I still don't know how to fix radio.

I was not very happy about majoring in physics until I met quantum mechanics. I was shocked and fascinated by its "strangeness" and anti-intuition. I spent several months trying to figure out ways to defeat Heisenberg uncertainty relation. From then on, I has been a happy physics student. My college life was hardworking and simple. I studied from 6:00pm to midnight every day. The exception was the second semester of my freshman year. A massive student movement broke out in April, 1989. I was there in all the demonstrations and protests.  But, I left for home before that terrible tragedy happened on June 4th. I received a telegraph on June 1st, saying my mom was very sick. I rushed home; my mom was very healthy.

In 1992, I entered the Graduate School of Academia Sinica of China. It was a very prestige institution, where I swallowed all the advanced physics courses, sharpened my English, and had my first publication.

In 1995, I arrived in America to pursue my PhD in physics. It was a  totally new and different environment; I struggled quite a while to  adjust myself and learn the language. I pulled through,  and met my wife, Yingying.  It has been wonderful.