Wang Qin Chen (born Wang Ming) grew up in a loving family and enjoyed a happy childhood in Shanghai. She excelled in school and social activities, and she dreamed of becoming a scientist like her role model, Madame Curie. Despite the political turmoil that rocked society at the time, she completed her undergraduate degree at one of China’s top colleges, but rather than making use of her education, the Communist government sent her to the countryside for menial farm and factory labor. After more than a decade lost to the Cultural Revolution, she began to reassemble her shattered career and eventually became a college professor. Later, she was one of the first seven women to be admitted to Corpus Christi College of Cambridge University, where she earned her Ph.D. in physics. In the 1980s, she relocated to the United States, where she worked at the California Institute of Technology and subsequently for a local high-tech company.
