Octogenarian weds 28-year-old
2004-12-24 11:15
Beijing - An 82-year-old Nobel Prize-winning physicist married a 28-year-old Chinese graduate student in a civil ceremony on Friday, the official China News Service reported.
Yang Chen Ning wed Weng Fan at the Civil Affairs Bureau in the southern city of Shantou, in Guangdong province, where the bride is from, CNS said.
They married in the foreign marriage registration division, where the parents of the bride witnessed the ceremony, the agency said.
The report did not give any other details, saying that the couple "kindly refused reporters' requests for interviews."
Nobel prize winner in '57
Chinese-born Yang shared the 1957 Nobel prize for physics with colleague Lee Tsung-dao.
He became a US citizen in 1964 and held professorships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, and at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, according to Brittanica.com.
Yang spent most of his career in the United States before returning to China last year following the death of his first wife.
State media have said that Weng is a student of foreign trade at Guangdong University.
In an e-mail to friends announcing his marriage plans, Yang reportedly wrote a poem in English about Weng.
It read, in part: "Oh, sweet angel, truthfully you are/ God's benevolent last gift/ To give my old soul/ A joyous rejuvenating lift."
- AP
