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Chien-Shiung Wu was a Chinese physicist who was instrumental to the Manhattan Project.
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Wu was awarded the prestigious Wolf Prize for Physics after being denied a Nobel Prize that her male colleagues received.
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Wu also advocated for gender equality, refusing to adopt her husband's last name and demanding equal pay.
Christopher Nolan's blockbuster film "Oppenheimer" largely omits the women and the people of color who worked on the real-life Manhattan Project, instead zeroing in on the white men involved in the US government's atomic bomb initiative.
Chien-Shiung Wu is a physicist who broke through both gender and racial barriers in 1940s America, wowing the science community with her significant contributions to the Manhattan Project.
Wu was born in Jiangsu province, China, on May 31, 1912, to a family of intellectual revolutionaries. Wu's mother was a teacher who valued education for both genders, while her father was an engineer who also advocated for women's equality. He became an activist during the 1911 Revolution, which ended imperial rule and established the more modernized Republic of China.
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