I grew up in China during years of great political turmoil. I went to primary school in 1968, two years after Mao Ze-Dong started the Cultural Revolution. I remember waking up at night, being told to go to school because the radio has just broadcasted Chairman Mao's new statement about the revolution. Everybody marched into the streets, cheering, singing, and even dancing, in a sea of revolutionary music, slogans, and portraits, of Chairman Mao.
Mao Ze-Dong died during my first year in senior high school. Soon afterwards, the Cultural Revolution came to an end, and universities reopened their doors to the general student population, basing admission only on competitive exams and not on family background or political orthodoxy. It is difficult to describe the euphoria among young people then, the majority of whom had been sent to the remote countryside to be re-educated through hard labor in communes. Going to college literally meant a new life, and the hopes and stakes at that time were immensely high.
I took the National College Entrance Exam that first year after the Cultural Revolution and was admitted to the Physics Department of Peking University in the Spring of 1978. My classmates and I, ranging in age 15 to 30, were extremely appreciative of the college spots we had been given. I still remember showing up in lecture halls at 6:30 am to claim a seat for the morning lessons.
When I was just a junior in college, professor T.D. Lee of Columbia University organized the China-U.S. Physics Examination and Application (CUSPEA) program. I took the exam and was admitted to the graduate physics program at Cornell in 1981.
As a wide-eyed 19-year old, I arrived in this country and encountered a world completely different from where I had come from. I conducted my thesis work under the supervision of Professor Robert C. Richardson (who shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics). My research was concerned with measuring Kapitza resistance between silver films and helium-3 in the millikelvin temperature range.
Not long after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in China, I finished my graduate studies and immediately afterwards began a temporary teaching job at Wellesley College. Later, I was invited to stay on at Wellesley as a tenure-track assistant professor, with funding provided by a Clare Boothe Luce Professorship awarded in 1991. I was promoted to Assistant professor with tenure in the winter of 1997.
My current research is concerned with the study of electric and dynamic properties of complex fluids. I have combined experimental observation, theoretical modeling, and computer simulation in my research efforts. I have received grants from the National Science Foundation, the Research Corporation, and the U.S. Department of Energy. Some of the results of my work have been presented at the national and international scientific conferences and have been published in the scientific journals. I have also been able to involve Wellesley students in my research.
Last Updated: 8/1/98
Betsy Lawson elawson@wellesley.edu Shanna Yetman '02 Office for Public Affairs Date Created: April 10, 2000 Last Modified: December 6, 2006 Page Expires: August 31, 2002