In honour of the 80th birthday of Professor Yang Chen Ning, renowned Nobel Prize physicist and Distinguished Professor-at-Large at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the C N Yang Archive is officially opened at the Chinese University today. Professor Yang officiated at the opening ceremony. This is the first ever archive of a Nobel Laureate in Hong Kong.

　　The C N Yang Archive consists of Professor Yang's papers, correspondence, manuscripts and publications since 1944, together with his medals, including the Nobel Medal. This valuable collection, which testifies to Professor Yang's towering achievements in a long and distinguished career, was generously donated by Professor Yang to the Chinese University in 1999.

　　The C N Yang Archive and its activities are generously supported by Dr Raymond Kwok, Dr David Sin Wai-Kin, the Wei Lun Foundation Limited and the Young Chi Wan Foundation Limited.

　　The Biography of C N Yang, a close-up look at the career of the great scientist, is also launched today. The book, published by the Chinese University Press, is written by Ms Yip Chung Man, a veteran journalist and long-time acquaintance of Professor Yang.

　　Professor Yang has made very important contributions to physics. Through interactions with the scientific community as well as national leaders, Professor Yang has also witnessed and influenced many aspects of the development of science in China, and has contributed to the improvement of ties between China and the US, especially between the respective scientific communities. Professor Yang has long been associated with the Chinese University. His public lecture in the then newly opened City Hall, at the invitation of CUHK, drew an overflowing audience. He has visited and lectured at the University frequently since the 1970s and has given valuable advice on academic development, especially to the Department of Physics. In 1982, Professor Yang was made an Honorary Professor at CUHK, and in 1986 graciously accepted a special Chair as Distinguished Professor-at-Large. With Professor Yau Shing Tung, he established the Institute for Mathematical Sciences at CUHK in 1993 and became its Co-Director. He was conferred the degree of Doctor of Science, honoris causa, by CUHK in 1997.

　　All these significant episodes that are of interest to historians, especially historians of science, are recorded in Professor Yang's papers, correspondence and manuscripts. These together with all his medals donated to CUHK including the Nobel Prize (1957), the Enrico Fermi Medal (1979), the Rumford Premium (1980), the Oppenheimer Memorial Plaque (1981), the U S National Medal of Science (1986), the Moscow State University Medal (1992), the Benjamin Franklin Medal (1993), the Bower Award (1994), the Albert Einstein Medal (1995), the N Bogoliubov Prize (1996), the Lars Onsager Prize (1999), the Academicum Pontificium (2000) and the King Faisal International Prize (2001), form the CN Yang Archive, a unique resource for studying Professor Yang's science and his times.

　　CUHK, having been entrusted with this collection, has undertaken to preserve, collate and organize the material, and to promote scholarship and publications based on the collection, including the publication of the Collected Papers of CN Yang.