Tsung-Dao Lee and the Future
(Jie Zhang — 22 November 2025)
Ladies and gentlemen,
As the final speaker for today’s commemoration, let me begin by inviting you to look at these two panoramic images. Together, they capture the enduring legacy TD has left in the expansion of human knowledge and in the development of China’s science and education.
Over the past year of commemorative events — and especially through the excellent talks we heard today — I am convinced that each of us has gained a deeper appreciation for TD’s scientific achievements and his profound love for his country.
That realization has also made something clear: the enterprises TD founded have grown into living institutions in their own right. They will not end with his passing, nor will they cease when a single commemorative event closes. I believe the initiatives he launched are like seeds — some have already broken ground and formed forests; others are still growing, ready to flourish. They have long since transcended the life of any single individual and represent the truest continuation of TD’s spirit.
All of us here are both beneficiaries and stewards of that forest — we are its planters and guides toward the future. Today, the weighty baton has been passed into our hands.
I still remember vividly that in 2000, TD told me: “The Chinese nation should make greater contributions to the advancement of human civilization through fundamental research.”
At that time, China’s scientific development was already accelerating — publications and patents were rising rapidly — yet I did not fully grasp the depth of his meaning. Over time, I have come to understand that TD’s hope for China was not merely to lead in quantity, but to achieve breakthroughs in quality and to foster new research paradigms. He envisioned China leaving its own mark on the grand epic of answering nature’s most fundamental scientific questions and thus contributing more significantly to human civilization.
This aspiration became especially clear in his 2014 letter to President Xi Jinping. He suggested that China should have a top-tier basic research institute akin to the Niels Bohr Institute — “focused on the frontiers of 21st-century physics and astronomy, including studies of dark matter and dark energy, exploring links between the largest and the smallest, and probing the most fundamental and profound interactions in nature.” That is the founding vision of Tsung-Dao Lee Institute (TDLI).
With strong support from the national and Shanghai governments, TDLI was formally established at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2016. At the end of 2021, at TD’s request, I assumed the directorship. I felt then — and feel now — that I have taken on a mission and a solemn responsibility.
In pursuit of that mission, our institute undertook extensive internal discussions and distilled TDLI’s core scientific mandate: to concentrate on two fundamental scientific challenges. The first is to explore the origin and evolution of matter under extreme cosmic conditions — the shared focus of our Particle & Nuclear Physics and Astronomy & Astrophysics divisions. The second, led by our Condensed Matter Physics division, is to address a societal bottleneck: realizing future high-performance computing technologies.
To meet these grand scientific goals, we have made full use of China’s varied natural environments by building dedicated instrument clusters in Shanghai, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Hainan. Together, they form extreme detection capabilities focused on fundamental questions and embody an innovative paradigm for “big-science” research.
Today, that paradigm is already bearing fruit at the research frontier.
TDLI’s TRIDENT neutrino telescope, sited on the West Pacific Ocean seabed at 3,500 m depth, has achieved its first prototype string of photodetectors; the project aims to complete the world’s first near-equatorial small neutrino telescope by 2026.
At the 2,400 m deep Jinping underground laboratory, the PandaX experiment reported the first hints of solar neutrinos and coherent elastic neutrino–nucleus scattering in 2024, signaling that liquid-xenon dark-matter detectors have reached a milestone sensitivity.
At 4,300 m above sea level on Saishiteng Mountain, the JUST spectroscopic telescope is under construction; its 4.4-m primary mirror and advanced multi-object spectrograph will map the large-scale distribution of dark matter and make decisive measurements of dark energy’s equation-of-state parameter, w — a key to understanding the universe’s future.
TD’s own doctoral work focused on hydrogen content and energy generation in white dwarfs. In this very building, our experimental astrophysics platform is using high-power lasers to study extreme astrophysical processes and to explore axions as a dark-matter candidate.
In the building’s topological materials platform, we are employing “solid-state universes” as simulators to probe fundamental physical laws. The coordinated efforts of these specialized instrument clusters not only led to the approval in 2024 of a national key laboratory for dark-matter physics — supporting comprehensive studies of dark-matter properties — but have also tightened our collaboration with colleagues worldwide to confront the most fundamental scientific challenges together.
TD’s intellectual legacy is also experiencing a renaissance in fundamental theory. In lattice QCD — a field TD strongly championed for parallel computing — we have achieved significant breakthroughs, including the establishment of the large-momentum effective field theory.
In neutrino physics, a field he cared about deeply, multiple Chinese teams are now advancing on different fronts. The Daya Bay experiment, which TD championed, has produced abundant results; the JUNO experiment led by Academician Wang Yifang at the Institute of High Energy Physics has released its first observational data and achieved measurements of the solar neutrino oscillation parameter θ12 and related mass parameters with precision 1.5–1.8 times better than the previous international best.
In relativistic heavy-ion collision physics — another area TD supported — many Chinese institutions have formed active groups (including Central China Normal University, University of Science and Technology of China, Shandong University, Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, Huzhou University, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Institute of Modern Physics, and China Institute of Atomic Energy). By participating in large international collaborations, they have produced notable results.
Centers TD advocated for — such as the Beijing Center for Modern Physics and the Zhejiang Center for Modern Physics — have become important training grounds for high-level talent and continue to drive China’s progress at the physics frontier.
Beyond the pulse of ongoing science, TD left us a rich spiritual and archival legacy: tens of thousands of documents, manuscripts, letters, and medals, along with institutions he helped establish — the Class of the Gifted Young, CUSPEA, the Hui-Chun Chin and Tsung-Dao Lee Chinese Undergraduate Research Endowment (CURE) — which have nurtured generations of scholars. Together they form a complete portrait of his life and call on us to preserve, study, and carry forward his achievements in a systematic way.
Under the leadership of TD’s eldest son, Professor James Z. Lee, the Tsung Dao (T.D.) Lee Library is now embarking on a new chapter.
Our first task is to break the library’s traditional boundaries and fully integrate five functions — library, archives, museum, science center, and art gallery — into a single cultural space. We will create a comprehensive educational environment that fuses research, science-art collaboration, and the scientist’s spirit, so TD’s wisdom may take root and his spirit endure.
At the same time, we will promote more open resource sharing. We are co-curating TD’s centennial exhibition with the China Scientists Museum, and we welcome the news that Peking University, Zhejiang University, and Suzhou are developing distinctive memorial halls and museums. We will actively promote deep inter-institutional collaboration — “museum-to-museum” linkage — to jointly draw a “map of TD’s spirit,” concentrating his intellectual light into a stronger force to guide future explorers.
On the scholarly front, we will build a global research hub not only to delve into TD’s scientific and educational thought, but also to systematically study the unique cohorts and institutions he helped create — CUSPEA, the Hui-Chun Chin and Tsung-Dao Lee Chinese Undergraduate Research Endowment (CURE), the Class of the Gifted Young, and more. By bringing together scholars from China and abroad, we aim to form a vibrant “TD academic community” in which discussion and exchange produce ideas that guide the future.
Looking ahead, innovative education is central to carrying forward TD’s mission. Relying on the Tsung-Dao Lee Class and the Zhiyuan College, we are committed to training exceptional talent with original creativity and to producing future leaders in fundamental disciplines. Through the Suzhou Tsung-Dao Lee Education and Science foundation, we will systematically empower basic education and, via four priority initiatives — the T. D. Lee school, scholarships, teaching awards, and young-scientist programs — spark the scientific passion of youth worldwide and build an open, international research ecosystem. We believe this aspiration will inspire a new generation to “interpret nature with the language of the heavens” and open new horizons for China and humankind.
TD was also a pioneer of science-art integration. In 2013 he endowed the “Tsung-Dao Lee Science and Art Lecture Fund” to interpret science through art and to inspire creativity through scientific ideas. Looking forward, we are convinced that the fusion of science and art is a source of innovation. The fund has been renewed: the new committee brings together leading scientists and artists; the scientific scope extends from physics into life sciences, astronomy, and microelectronics; and the artistic scope includes painting, music, and literature. Together, they will deepen the union of scientific reasoning and artistic beauty to stimulate original, future-oriented innovation.
Today we gather in the Quest for Infinity Hall — a space named in tribute to TD’s scientific spirit and humanistic sensibility. The 600-meter rotating scroll displayed here, created collaboratively by TDLI’s scientific community, depicts both the grandeur of the universe’s origin and humanity’s quest to uncover the laws of evolution.
At the top of the scroll is a passage by TD: “Our Milky Way is tiny in the vast universe. Our sun is unremarkable among its 400 billion stars, and Earth is just a small planet in our solar system. It is because of Earth and humanity that the universe becomes beautiful, filled with scientific spirit and humanistic warmth.”
The scroll is far from complete. It will continue to grow, awaiting each of us to add new strokes with the courage to explore, the passion to educate, and the wisdom to connect disciplines.
May we live up to this trust. Let TD’s spirit be our lamp to brighten the path ahead; let his words lift our gaze to the distant stars.
Thank you.