Yang was born in Hefei, east China's Anhui Province, in 1922. In the 1940s, he went to the United States to pursue academic studies and subsequently held teaching positions. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957.
The Yang-Mills gauge theory introduced by Yang and Robert Mills is one of the most important achievements of physics in the 20th century.
Over more than 20 years since he returned to China, Yang had taught at Tsinghua University, making important contributions to cultivating and recruiting talent and promoting international academic exchanges.