Home Page for C.U.S.P.E.A. Participants
created by Weiming Que, Ph.D.
My last impression of She Chiao Feng After the 1991 APS March meeting, I travelled to L.A. for a job interview, and I decided to pay She Chiao a visit during the trip.
I arrived at U.C. L.A. campus, found the building of the physics department, and knocked on She Chiao's office door. No one answered. I was maybe 10 minutes early for our appointment. So I found a place in the hallway to wait.
Ten minutes later, She Chiao emerged miraculously. He showed up from nowhere. Somehow, I suspected he was in the office plugging away when I knocked on the door.
We entered in his red convertible, and he took me to lunch in a nearby restaurant.
He was apparently enjoying himself. He had every reason to. Not everyone can be a Ph.D. graduate from Harvard, and a professor of U.C.L.A. at such a young age.
He told me that he was dating a law student. They just had a wild weekend. He had a house in L.A., and he was hiring a contractor to renovate it.
He asked me what he thought of the talk he gave at the March meeting. I said it was difficult for me to understand his talk. I wasn't familiar with the field of research he was involved in.
She Chiao kindly paid for my lunch. After lunch, he took me for a ride in the convertible. At one point, he stopped to take the cover above our heads off. It was my first time riding in a car without anything above my head. Wind blowed against my head. I felt somewhat less safe, but also exciting.
That was the last time I saw She Chiao. Then one day, I heard that She Chiao had died, plunging from a highrise building in Paris. I was shocked.
He was so young. And so successful. At the time, he was perhaps arguably the most successful in his physics career among his CUSPEAN peers. I couldn't comprehend why God had to take him at this time.
I will remember the happy She Chiao, the one who took me for a ride in a red convertible in the streets of L.A.
Written by Weiming Que
P.S. If you know enough about She Chiao's career, please forward me the information so that I can build a personal page for him.
Contributions to the features page are welcome!