Since the Nobel Prize began recognising exceptional achievements in science, literature and peace in 1901, only five scientists from Europe and the United States have been double recipients of this prestigious award.

Could a Chinese scientist have joined their ranks?

Yang’s long-time friend Chen Fong-ching, an honorary professor at the physics department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said that since the 1980s, many scientists had suggested that Yang deserved a second Nobel.

Yang and Lee made history in 1957 as the first Chinese-born scientists to be awarded the Nobel Prize for physics for another discovery that challenged an orthodox concept known as parity, the idea that a decaying particle would always result in the same number of sub-particles.

In a landmark paper published in 1956, the duo suggested experiments that would show the number of sub-particles created by a decaying particle could vary.