Funhua Fan

In 1913 her husband, Zhong-Yi Wu, founded the Ming De School for girls in Liuhe, Taicang, Jiangsu. To overcome the traditional resistance to educating girls, he enlisted her to visit families and persuade them to allow their daughters to attend the school.⁠[1][2][3][4]

An article by Shan Jia in the Southeast University alumni magazine Dongnan Daxue Dongli Dianqi Ren (2016, no. 8) states that Zhong-Yi Wu opened the Ming De School and served as its principal himself, and that his wife worked alongside him and helped him run the school’s affairs; to encourage local people to send their children to it, the school provided tuition, fees and books free of charge and also taught practical subjects such as sewing, embroidery and gardening.⁠[5]

The entry in Women in World History states that she visited local families to persuade parents both to send their daughters to her husband’s school and to end the practice of binding young girls’ feet. Chien-Shiung Wu’s granddaughter, Jada YuanJada YuanJada Yuan is a journalist who was a contributing editor at New York magazine, served in 2018 as the first “52 Places Traveler” of The New York Times and was afterward a reporter at The Washington Post until February 2026; she is a granddaughter of the physicists Chien-Shiung Wu and Luke Chia-Liu Yuan.Open the full entry, writes in The Washington PostThe Washington PostThe Washington Post is an American daily newspaper founded in Washington in 1877, known for its role in the Pentagon Papers case and the Watergate investigation. Run by the Meyer–Graham family for eighty years from 1933, it has been owned personally by Jeff Bezos since 2013.Open the full entry that Zhong-Yi Wu was adamantly against the foot-binding of girls.⁠[3][6]

An article in the South China Morning Post describes her and Zhong-Yi Wu as progressives from well-to-do scholarly families who opened the Ming De School for girls in Liuhe, emphasizing not only the Analects of Confucius and Chinese poetry but also mathematics and science. Jada Yuan’s article likewise calls it Chien-Shiung Wu’s parents’ school, while elsewhere describing it as the school her father founded, mainly so that his daughter could get an education.⁠[2][6]

The Encyclopedia of World Biography states that after the revolution of 1911 that overthrew the Qing dynasty Zhong-Yi Wu opened a school for girls in Liuhe, that she became a tutor, and that the couple became known as strong advocates for education and encouraged their daughter to put her utmost effort into academic excellence.⁠[7]

The entry in Women in World History states that she and her husband supported their daughter’s wish to go to the United StatesUnited StatesThe United States is a federal country in North America made up of 50 states, the District of Columbia as the seat of government, and territories such as Puerto Rico and Guam; its capital is Washington, D.C. The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The 2020 census (April 1, 2020) counted a resident population of 331,449,281, and the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are apportioned among the states on the basis of the census.Open the full entry and that their daughter set sail across the Pacific in the fall of 1936. The Mathematical Culture article states that Chien-Shiung Wu left for the United States in the summer of 1936, taking leave of her parents on the bank of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, and that what was expected to be a separation of only a few years turned out to be a parting for good.⁠[3][8]

Jada Yuan writes that waving from the boat was the last time Chien-Shiung Wu saw her parents alive.⁠[6]

The entry in Women in World History states that in July 1937, on learning that Japan had invaded China, Chien-Shiung Wu realized that she was cut off from all contact with her family; the Museum of Chinese in America states that because of the communication limitations of the Second World War she was disconnected from her loved ones for years.⁠[3][9]

In 1942 Chien-Shiung Wu married Luke Chia-Liu YuanLuke Chia-Liu YuanLuke Chia-Liu Yuan (1912–2003) was a Chinese-born American experimental physicist and the husband of the physicist Chien-Shiung Wu; he worked mainly at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he was a senior physicist. He was elected an academician of Academia Sinica in 1959 and chaired the steering committee of Taiwan’s Synchrotron Radiation Research Center from 1983 to 2002.Open the full entry; because of the fighting in the Pacific during the Second World War, neither family was able to attend the wedding.⁠[10][11]

After the Second World War, once communications with China were restored, Chien-Shiung Wu received a letter from her family; the New Dictionary of Scientific Biography states that she learned from them that they had survived the Japanese invasion.⁠[10][4]

The entry in Women in World History states that in 1945, with the Second World War over, Chien-Shiung Wu finally received news that her family in China was alive; the Museum of Chinese in America states that after the war she was able to resume correspondence with them and expected to return to China, but the Chinese Civil War disrupted these plans.⁠[3][9]

The entry in Women in World History states that Chien-Shiung Wu became a naturalized American citizen in 1954 and that she never saw her family again and received only infrequent letters.⁠[3]

Her eldest son, Wu Jianying, died of illness in 1958, and her husband, Zhong-Yi Wu, in 1959.⁠[8][8]

Shan Jia’s article states that in 1960 Chien-Shiung Wu wrote to an old friend that at every holiday and festival she could not help missing her home town, all the more because her father and her elder brother had both died and her mother was old and often ill.⁠[5]

She died in 1962.⁠[8][5]

A column by Chen Siyi on the China Times news site states that Chien-Shiung Wu’s older brother and her parents died one after another between the late 1950s and the early 1960s, and that because the U.S. government at the time strictly limited its citizens’ travel to communist countries she could not return to China for the funerals of her relatives.⁠[12]

The New Dictionary of Scientific Biography states that Chien-Shiung Wu never got to see her parents and brothers again before they died in the 1950s and 1960s.⁠[4]

Chien-Shiung Wu was not able to return to China until 1973. The National Park Service’s profile states that by then her parents had died and their tombs had been destroyed, and that her uncle and her brother had also been killed in the Cultural Revolution.⁠[10]

The Mathematical Culture article states that the uncle, Wu ZhuozhiWu ZhuozhiWu Zhuozhi (1897–1967) was a Chinese mechanical engineer and bus-company operator who studied and worked in France and in 1931 founded Jiangnan Qiche Gongsi, a motor bus company in Nanjing that later developed into the city’s public transport enterprise. He was a younger brother of Zhong-Yi Wu and gave financial support to his niece, the physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, when she went to study in the United States in 1936.Open the full entry, and the only surviving brother, Wu Jianhao, whom Chien-Shiung Wu had met in Hong Kong in 1965 were persecuted to death one after the other in the Cultural Revolution, and that her parents’ graves had been destroyed so that she could not pay her respects there; the article calls this a product of that mad era.⁠[8][8]

Chen Siyi’s column likewise states that by then her uncle and her younger brother had died after being persecuted in the Cultural Revolution and that her parents’ graves had been destroyed. Jada Yuan’s article speaks of the deaths of the uncle and the brother by torture in the Cultural Revolution; the Museum of Chinese in America states that her parents had passed away, as had her brother and her uncle, who were killed during the Cultural Revolution; and the entry in Women in World History states that when she returned her parents were dead and her brothers had been killed during the Cultural Revolution.⁠[12][6][9][3]

An article on the website of the China Zhi Gong Party states that after leaving China in 1936 Chien-Shiung Wu long had no contact with her family, and that, returning after 37 years away, she found both her parents and her older brother dead and even her parents’ graves wrecked. The 2022 China Science Daily article states that by her return her parents, brothers and other close relatives had all died, which remained a lasting sorrow for her.⁠[13][14]

The Mathematical Culture article gives the name of Chien-Shiung Wu’s older brother as Wu Jianying and those of her two younger brothers as Wu Jianhao and Wu Jianjie, the youngest, who died young; the last characters of the four children’s names form, in order, the phrase yingxiong haojie (heroes and outstanding figures). The National Academy of Sciences memoir gives Chien-Shiung Wu an older and a younger brother, the National Park Service’s profile states that she had two brothers and was the middle child, and the South China Morning Post article likewise states that the couple also had two sons; Shan Jia’s article similarly states that the couple had two sons and a daughter, Chien-Shiung Wu being the middle child.⁠[8][15][10][2][5]

In 1947 Chien-Shiung Wu and Luke Chia-Liu Yuan had a son, Vincent YuanVincent YuanVincent Yuan (born 1947) is a physicist whose research has been carried out at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the son of Chien-Shiung Wu and Luke Chia-Liu Yuan; he took part in the TRIPLE Collaboration’s research on parity violation in neutron resonances and was first author of an experiment that measured the temperature of a shock wave by neutron resonance spectroscopy.Open the full entry.⁠[11]

English-language sources spell her name in several ways: Funhua Fan in the National Academy of Sciences memoir and the National Women’s History Museum’s biography; Fan, Funhua in the American Institute of Physics’ record; Fan Fuhua in the New Dictionary of Scientific Biography and the Encyclopedia of World Biography; Fan Fu-hua in the South China Morning Post; Fan Fu Hua in the Museum of Chinese in America’s profile; and Fuhua H. Fan Wu in Women in World History.⁠[15][11][16][4][7][2][9][3]

Shan Jia’s article prints her Chinese name, which is romanized Fan Fuhua, and states that Zhong-Yi Wu renamed his wife Fuhua, taking the name from Sun Yat-sen’s words calling for driving out the Tartar barbarians and restoring China (huifu Zhonghua).⁠[5]

The National Academy of Sciences memoir states that she and Zhong-Yi Wu provided a warm, happy and nurturing home where education and learning were of utmost importance.⁠[15]

The entry in Women in World History states that Zhong-Yi Wu filled the family’s home with scholarly books and that at night the family read together.⁠[3]

The Museum of Chinese in America describes her and her husband as forward-thinking for their time, especially in gender equality and education, and their encouragement of their daughter’s curiosity and academic tenacity as a rare privilege. The South China Morning Post article states that the couple recognized their daughter’s remarkable intellectual qualities. Jada Yuan writes that Chien-Shiung Wu had been lucky to be born to politically progressive parents, actual revolutionaries who advocated for women’s rights and the education of girls, and the Committee of 100’s profile likewise states that her parents were progressive and believed in education for everyone, and that these unconventional parents believed their daughter deserved to understand the universe.⁠[9][2][6][17]

Shan Jia’s article states that Zhong-Yi Wu and his wife loved each other and shared the same ideals; it adds that Chien-Shiung Wu said she always found it incomprehensible when couples were constantly at odds, which the article attributes to her parents’ devotion to each other and in which it sees the root of her own close marriage to Luke Chia-Liu Yuan.⁠[5]