Ting's parents returned to China two months after his birth[2] where Ting was homeschooled by his parents throughout WWII.[3] After the communist takeover of the mainland that forced the nationalist government to flee to Taiwan, Ting moved to the island in 1949. He would live in Taiwan from 1949 to 1956 and conducted most of his formal schooling there.[3] His father started to teach engineering and his mother would teach psychology at National Taiwan University (NTU). Ting attended and finished Middle School in Taiwan.[4][5]
In 1976, Ting was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, which he shared with Burton Richter of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, for the discovery of the J/ψ meson nuclear particle. They were chosen for the award, in the words of the Nobel committee, "for their pioneering work in the discovery of a heavy elementary particle of a new kind."[8] The discovery was made in 1974 when Ting was heading a research team at MIT exploring new regimes of high energy particle physics.[9]
Ting gave his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Mandarin. Although there had been Chinese Nobel Prize recipients before (Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang), none had previously delivered the acceptance speech in Chinese. In his Nobel banquet speech, Ting emphasized the importance of experimental work:
In reality, a theory in natural science cannot be without experimental foundations; physics, in particular, comes from experimental work. I hope that awarding the Nobel Prize to me will awaken the interest of students from the developing nations so that they will realize the importance of experimental work.[10]
In 1995, not long after the cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider project had severely reduced the possibilities for experimental high-energy physics on Earth, Ting proposed the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a space-borne cosmic-ray detector. The proposal was accepted and he became the principal investigator and has been directing the development since then. A prototype, AMS-01, was flown and tested on Space Shuttle mission STS-91 in 1998. The main mission, AMS-02, was then planned for launch by the Shuttle and mounting on the International Space Station.[11]
This project is a massive $2 billion undertaking involving 500 scientists from 56 institutions and 16 countries.[12] After the 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, NASA announced that the Shuttle was to be retired by 2010 and that AMS-02 was not on the manifest of any of the remaining Shuttle flights. Dr. Ting was forced to (successfully) lobby the United States Congress and the public to secure an additional Shuttle flight dedicated to this project. Also during this time, Ting had to deal with numerous technical problems in fabricating and qualifying the large, extremely sensitive and delicate detector module for space.[13]AMS-02 was successfully launched on Shuttle mission STS-134 on May 16, 2011, and was installed on the International Space Station on May 19, 2011.[14][15]
Discovery of nuclear anti-matter (the anti-deuteron).[16]
Measuring the size of the electron family (the electron, the muon, and the tau) showing that the electron family has zero size (with a radius smaller than 10−17cm).[17]
Precision study of light rays and massive light rays showing that light rays and massive light rays (vector mesons) can transform into each other at high energies and providing a critical verification of the quark model.[18][19]
Determination of the number of electron families and neutrino species in the Universe and the precision verification of the Electroweak Unification Theory.[25]
Proposed, constructed and leads the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) experiment on the International Space Station involving the participation of a 16 nation collaboration searching for the existence of antimatter, the origin of dark matter and the properties of cosmic rays.[26][27]
Ting lived in a turbulent age during his childhood and his family was a big influence on him. In his biographical for the Nobel Prize, he recalled:
Since both my parents were working, I was brought up by my maternal grandmother. My maternal grandfather lost his life during the first Chinese Revolution. After that, at the age of thirty-three, my grandmother decided to go to school, became a teacher, and brought my mother up alone. When I was young I often heard stories from my mother and grandmother recalling the difficult lives they had during that turbulent period and the efforts they made to provide my mother with a good education. Both of them were daring, original, and determined people, and they have left an indelible impression on me.
When I was twenty years old I decided to return to the United States for a better education. My parents' friend, G.G. Brown, Dean of the School of Engineering, University of Michigan, told my parents I would be welcome to stay with him and his family. At that time I knew very little English and had no idea of the cost of living in the United States. In China, I had read that many American students go through college on their own resources. I informed my parents that I would do likewise. I arrived at the Detroit airport on 6 September 1956 with $100, which at the time seemed more than adequate. I was somewhat frightened, did not know anyone, and communication was difficult.[5]
Ting is the eldest son of his family. He has one brother, Ting Chao-hua (丁肇華) and one sister, Ting Chao-min (丁肇民). In an interview with China Central Television, he explained that the combination of his siblings' and his name is the first three characters of "中華民國" (Republic of China). His parents named them after the country to commemorate their grandfather, who was a martyr in the Xinhai Revolution.[46]
In 1960, Ting married Kay Louise Kuhne, an architect, and together they had two daughters, Jeanne Ting Chowning and Amy Ting. In 1985 he married Dr. Susan Carol Marks, and they had one son, Christopher, born in 1986.[5]
Barber, D.P.; et al. (1979). "Tests of quantum chromodynamics and a direct measurement of the strong coupling constant αs at √s=30 GeV". Phys. Lett. B. 89 (1): 139–144. Bibcode:1979PhLB...89..139B. doi:10.1016/0370-2693(79)90092-3.
^McAlpine, Kate (February 28, 2018). "Q&A with Samuel Ting". Engineering Research News, University of Michigan College of Engineering. Archived from the original on February 2, 2023. Retrieved February 2, 2023.