It is our great honor to have Professor Zhenning Yang visiting the Center for Statistical Science of Tsinghua University. Professor Yang (Chen-Ning Franklin Yang) is one of the Nobel prize winner in physics, Academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and honorary president of Institute for Advanced Study of Tsinghua University. He was invited by Academician Tang Jiahao, a distinguished visiting professor of the Center.

Prof. Yang was warmly welcomed by the teachers and students of the Center for Statistical Science. The students cherished this rare opportunity of meeting this distinguished guest.

Prof. Yang was at the Center for Statistical Science.

Prof. Yang visited the Center for Statistical Science under the introduction of Associate Professor Deng Ke, the deputy director of the Center, and learned about the construction of Statistics discipline, as well as the situations of its talents’ cultivation at Tsinghua University. Speaking of Statistics, Mr. Yang said that when he was studying at the National SouthWest Associated University, the teacher of the statistics course was the famous mathematician Mr. Xu Baolu. Those interesting stories in the past still remain fresh in Prof. Yang’s memory, and was shared with today’s statisticians.

The talk with PHD students was originally planned to last for half an hour, but turned out to be nearly one and a half hour. Prof. Yang’s clear thinking and loud voice impressed all the students. We could hardly believe that this is a 97-year-old professor. Prof.Yang shared with the PHD students that it is normal to feel anxious about choosing the direction of academic research, because most scholars have had the same feelings during this period. What we should do is to start from our own interests and devote ourselves to exploration before we could unearth new problems and new discoveries.

Professor Tang Jiahao mentioned that he recently opened a short course on writing for PHD students, pointing out that the writing of English academic papers is also a common problem encountered by the students. Prof. Yang then shared his method to improve his English at a young age — reading. It was recommended to read the original novels written by famous writers such as Hemingway and read the whole novel without using the dictionaries. This method proved to be very efficient at improving the English ability.

The students said that they were all deeply impressed and touched by the words and encouragement from Prof. Yang, and appreciated this great opportunity of communicating with this world top scientist very much.