In the last episode, I discussed my evaluation of Chen-Ning Yang, but that was mainly concerning aspects beyond his academic achievements. I also stated that for scientists, character and achievement are two separate matters. A person can be a genius in a certain field even if their character is poor and they lack conscience. Conversely, many people have good character and kind hearts but lack talent in their professional fields. In this episode, let's discuss Chen-Ning Yang's historical standing and influence as a physicist.

Those who are active on the **Jianzhong network** (Simplified Chinese internet: referring to the Chinese internet environment in mainland China) may have heard a saying that Chen-Ning Yang is a "god-like" figure in the field of physics, far beyond an ordinary Nobel laureate in physics. He is not only the greatest contemporary physicist, bar none, but also a "top five, aspiring for top three" figure in human history, second only to Einstein and Newton, capable of contending with Maxwell. If you search for related information on Zhihu, Douyin, Bilibili, and any other Chinese social media, you will almost uniformly find this conclusion. You will see numerous analyses and arguments from self-proclaimed physics PhDs, who will start by explaining the classification of physics, then list which achievements are considered top-tier and which are secondary, finally concluding that **Yang-Mills gauge theory** (Yang-Mills gauge theory: a quantum field theory describing the interactions of elementary particles) is one of the greatest achievements in the history of physics, comparable to Newton's Laws of Motion, Einstein's Theory of Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics, thus Chen-Ning Yang's place in the historical top five is well-deserved. This sounds quite professional, doesn't it? Frankly speaking, I am not a physics PhD and do not have the ability to judge whether their claims are accurate. However, we can still infer through common sense.

Do you recognize this gentleman in the picture? I believe most people don't. That's okay, his name is Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi: one of the founders of algebra). I mentioned him in a previous episode about "The Last Economy." He is the father of algebra, who lived in the Khwarazm region in the 8th century, the same Khwarazm that was destroyed by Genghis Khan, which today belongs to Uzbekistan. Why suddenly mention him? Because this mathematician, whom most Chinese people have never heard of, is widely considered one of the top five mathematicians in the world in the Arab world. I searched for keywords in Arabic, and in the eyes of major mainstream media, including some self-media personalities, he is a figure on par with Euler and Newton, at the very least ranking among the top. For example, this introductory article from BBC Arabic quotes an Iraqi-born physicist at the beginning, saying, "Without algebra, mathematics would not exist, nor would modern physics." It concludes that al-Khwarizmi is one of the three most important mathematicians in human history. Another example is a ranking analysis of mathematicians written by a netizen who claims to be a mathematics PhD; it also looks very professional. His conclusion is that al-Khwarizmi is among the historical top five, slightly below Newton, and above Gauss and Pythagoras. Even more outrageous is another article claiming that the three greatest mathematicians in human history are all Muslims, followed by Pythagoras and Euclid.

To add, many article titles on Arabic channels are like this: "Al-Jahiz, the Muslim thinker who discovered evolution 1000 years before Darwin," "Ibn Sina, the King of Physicians, whose name Google commemorates every year." Doesn't this tone sound familiar? If translated into Chinese, wouldn't it become "Zhang Heng's seismograph was 1700 years earlier than the West," or "West Point worships Lei Feng"? This just goes to show that some aspects of humanity are interconnected. I carefully examined al-Khwarizmi's achievements, and they are indeed very great, but to say he surpassed Gauss and Pythagoras, I'm afraid most people outside the Arab world would find it hard to accept. Of course, al-Khwarizmi's case is not too extreme, because some Chinese netizens have already ranked Liu Hui eighth and Zu Chongzhi tenth. If you are objective, neither of these two would even make it into the top three hundred. The reason I bring up this example is to illustrate a simple truth: if you apply a nationalistic filter and want to argue how great someone from your own nation is in a professional field, elevating them to an undeserved height is actually very easy. Because you only need to argue in the direction you desire, and the argumentation process can appear very professional, but such arguments are not objective and lack horizontal comparison.

This principle is like many veteran Lakers fans who would also consider Yao Ming comparable to Shaquille O'Neal; by repeatedly playing a few edited clips and offering some so-called professional analysis, they can create the impression that the two are equally matched. Similarly, many people believe Liu Xiang is a world-class track and field superstar, boasting that Su Bingtian's first 60 meters is faster than Usain Bolt's. Indians also believe their cricket god Sachin Tendulkar is comparable to Michael Jordan, because, by audience numbers, cricket is the world's second most popular sport.

Alright, next, let's objectively discuss Chen-Ning Yang's true standing in the history of physics. Before we begin, I hope you, the viewer, will forget all the Simplified Chinese information you've seen and deeply believed. Imagine yourself as an alien who has just landed on Earth, with no emotional connection to any person or country on this planet. Your task now is to figure out who the greatest physicists in this planet's history are. What would you do? Would you conduct public opinion surveys in the most populous countries on this planet? That might be somewhat limited, because there might be a nationalistic filter, deliberately ranking their own people too high, right? Moreover, the judgments of ordinary people might contain too many emotional components; between two equally accomplished scholars, whoever has a more legendary or compelling life story might receive a higher ranking.

Some might say, "Why not just ask AI? AI is the most objective." But my experience is that AI actually "tailors its answers," because there's a corpus contamination issue. For example, when I asked ChatGPT about Chen-Ning Yang's ranking, first in Chinese, its answer was definitely in the top five, followed by various praises, largely similar to the style on Zhihu. Then I asked the same question in English, and its answer was in the historical top 100 or top 50 of the 20th century. I believe if you ask a few more times, you might also get very different answers.

There was once an urban legend that the Nobel Prize committee intended to award the prize to the inventor of **Artemisinin** (Artemisinin: an anti-malarial drug), but because many units were involved in the project, it was difficult to determine whose contribution was the greatest. So the committee called the 7 related units separately, and each unit claimed their contribution was the greatest. Then the committee members asked, "Besides you, who made the second greatest contribution?" All seven units said Tu Youyou. So they awarded the prize to Tu Youyou. Currently, this is of course a humorous anecdote, somewhat satirizing the units vying for credit, but this method is a very clever one that can effectively circumvent self-aggrandizement. For example, in the aforementioned mathematician rankings, Arabic speakers would rank al-Khwarizmi in the top 5 or top 10, and the Chinese world would rank Liu Hui in the top 10, but Arabs would never rank Liu Hui in the top 10, nor would al-Khwarizmi appear on Chinese top 10 lists. Meanwhile, regardless of the country, the names of Euler, Euclid, Gauss, Newton, Riemann, and Archimedes almost always appear in the Top 10 lists. Then you know who the true top-tier of the top-tier are.

Following this line of thought, we can also look at the rankings of physicists from various countries around the world, and by cross-referencing them, we can ascertain Chen-Ning Yang's true standing. It should be noted that my selection criteria for the following rankings prioritize professional physics magazines, physics sections of authoritative media, and rankings voted on by professionals from various national physics societies—that is, physicists selecting physicists—to ensure fairness and professionalism as much as possible.

Let's first look at the English-speaking world. We begin with a selection from the magazine "Physics World" (Physics World: a physics industry media under the Institute of Physics). A little background: "Physics World" is a physics industry media under the Institute of Physics, and one of the most authoritative physics popular science magazines globally. In 1999, it conducted a poll, inviting over 130 physicists in the industry to vote for the greatest physicists of all time, which is essentially **peer review** (Peer Review: a mechanism in academia for scrutinizing and evaluating research findings). What were the results? The top ten were, in order: Einstein, Newton, Maxwell, Bohr, Heisenberg, Galileo, Feynman, Dirac, Schrödinger, and Rutherford. Chen-Ning Yang was not among them. The subsequent nominees were divided into 7 tiers based on the number of votes: Boltzmann, Faraday, and Planck were in the first tier; Fermi and Marie Curie were in the R3 tier; while Chen-Ning Yang received only one vote, placing him at the very last position of the final tier. According to this poll, he ranked approximately 61st. Does this ranking meet your expectations? It should be noted that "Physics World" is an industry media, not a professional academic journal; the most professional academic journals, like "Physical Review Letters," do not conduct such rankings.

Next, let's look at another authoritative media outlet—"Physics Today" (Physics Today: the flagship publication of the American Institute of Physics), under the American Physical Society. "Physics Today" did not create a direct ranking, but it once produced a pictorial album of the most outstanding physicists of the 20th century, selected by a committee of physicists including a former president of the American Physical Society. A total of 200 people were inducted, listed alphabetically by surname, without any specific order. Chen-Ning Yang's name was still absent. This means that, at least in this list, Chen-Ning Yang's importance did not qualify him for the top 200 of the 20th century.

Next is "Nature" magazine. It released a Hall of Fame database, created by a team from a massive collection of biographies compiled from 25 language versions of Wikipedia, including Chinese, and categorized by industry. This primarily reflects public recognition. In the physicist category, according to 2025 data, the top two are still the unshakeable Newton and Einstein. Planck, Bohr, Faraday, and Marie Curie are also prominently featured in the top ten. Scrolling further down, Rutherford is 20th, and Maxwell is 35th—this ranking seems a bit low. Not on the first page, we turn to the second page and see some familiar names: Pauli (Wolfgang Pauli: Austrian physicist, proposed the Pauli exclusion principle), the same Pauli from the Pauli exclusion principle, Cavendish (Henry Cavendish: British scientist, measured Earth's density), Dirac, Landau, Boltzmann—all old acquaintances. Still not on the second page. Continuing further, at 214th, we see Yoichiro Nambu (Yoichiro Nambu: Japanese-American physicist, Nobel laureate in physics), and at 235th, we see Tsung-Dao Lee (Tsung-Dao Lee: Chinese-American physicist, Nobel laureate in physics). Finally, at 269th, we find our old acquaintance, Chen-Ning Yang. This summarizes the main situation in the English-speaking world.

Then I successively searched for the situation in German, French, Spanish, and Japanese. This process was very painful. Later, I asked AI, and it told me that, apart from English, professional physics magazines in other languages generally do not provide rankings of physicists to avoid disputes. Rankings are usually listed by commercial magazines or individuals, lacking professionalism, and typically only go up to the top 10, at most the top 50. I still briefly checked some of those Top 10 lists, and they were largely similar, with Newton and Einstein consistently in the top two. It's worth mentioning that, compared to German, Japanese, and Spanish, some French rankings are quite shameless. For example, one list actually ranked Marie Curie second and Newton third. Upon closer inspection, they counted Marie Curie as French. Did you think that was all? They gave the fifth spot to Marie Curie's eldest daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie, and the tenth spot to Marie Curie's son-in-law. Both of these individuals were ranked above Planck! Then Marie Curie's husband, Pierre Curie, was ranked 39th, higher than Heisenberg at 41st. The Curie family alone occupied 4 spots. Even more outrageous, her 9th spot was given to Mahabadi, a nuclear physicist from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and 17th to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb. Both of these individuals were ranked higher than Archimedes, Bohr, Galileo, and Descartes. This just goes to show that France is currently experiencing both nationalism and severe Islamization. But apart from these factors, the usual suspects on these lists are similar to the English lists—the same people. Of course, these lists usually go up to a maximum of 50 people, and generally, you won't see Chen-Ning Yang or any Chinese name.

Some might think that these rankings from smaller language groups like German and French are popular rankings and unreliable. OK, let's look at more professional academic rankings. This is **Research.com** (Research.com: a website providing global rankings and academic metrics for academic researchers), a website dedicated to providing global rankings, academic metrics, and conference information for academic researchers, universities, and institutions. Its basis for ranking scholars is called the **H-index** (H-index: a metric that measures a scholar's research output and impact). This index combines several indicators: first, the number of published papers; second, the number of citations; third, academic awards received; and fourth, publication records in top journals. You might immediately realize that this calculation method is mainly for contemporary scholars; those from the era of Archimedes and Newton would certainly not be included, meaning the competition is actually smaller. So, how did Yang perform on such a list? This is the ranking of Chinese scholars, with Xiang Zhang from the University of Hong Kong ranking first, and 48th among contemporary physicists. Scrolling down, Chen-Ning Yang's name was not found. We exited and searched the entire database, and still found no mention of him, nor of Tsung-Dao Lee. Then I learned that Research's H-index primarily targets scholars who are still relatively active; Yang and Lee were mainly active from the 1950s to the 1970s, so they were not included.

So I turned to another cross-language academic database website, **PLOS** (PLOS: a non-profit open-access scientific publisher). Although it initially focused on biology, it has also built a vast database of researchers, including a total of 230,000 scholars from various countries and disciplines worldwide, covering Chen-Ning Yang's era as well. It still ranks scholars in a manner similar to the H-index. I downloaded this Excel file, which was over 80 megabytes. I searched for Chen-Ning Yang's name and found him at 5136th place. However, this refers to his ranking across all disciplines, not just physics. So, we filtered for the "applied physics" sub-option and counted Yang's ranking in this field: 138th. Note that this still refers to contemporary scholars' rankings; if we consider the great figures from before the establishment of modern academia, Yang's ranking would be even lower. In summary, the rankings we can currently find for Yang are 61st, 138th, 269th, and outside the top 200. This means that whether by industry peer vote, professional committee selection, public influence, or paper citation count, he does not make it into the historical top 50. Considering that the 61st place ranking in "Physics World" was based on only one person voting for him, which has a degree of randomness, we can roughly infer that Chen-Ning Yang's fair historical ranking should be between 200th and 300th.

The above data is still favorable to Yang. If you check another academic database website, **Academic Influence** (Academic Influence: a website that analyzes academic influence based on machine learning), Yang's ranking is even worse, at 1611th, lower than Samuel C. C. Ting at 1401st and Steven Chu at 694th. The highest-ranked Chinese person is Tsung-Dao Lee, at 178th. Some might argue that this is just foreigners discriminating against us. The problem is that in multiple rankings, Chen-Ning Yang's ranking is even lower than Tsung-Dao Lee's; how can that be explained?

Finally, I want to say that even ranking in the two to three hundreds, this contribution can already be described as "great." But we must be realistic; we cannot elevate someone to "top five, aspiring for top three" merely because of certain emotional factors. Otherwise, what's the difference between us and those Iranians or Pakistanis who rank their own fathers of the atomic bomb in the top ten? I believe if North Koreans were to rank their top ten, probably nine of them would have the surname Kim. Alright, that concludes my findings regarding Chen-Ning Yang's historical standing. If you have more convincing professional media rankings, please feel free to share relevant links in the comments section. See you next time.