She proved that a fundamental law of the universe, believed unshakable by Einstein and Fermi, was actually false. Chien-Shiung Wu broke the universe’s ultimate mirror, saved the Manhattan Project from failure, and helped explain why matter exists at all.

This episode follows the definitive experimentalist of the 20th century from a progressive girls’ school in China to Berkeley and Columbia, showing how her obsession with precision made the boldest theories of physics tangible.

• Her xenon-135 data that rescued a failing plutonium reactor
• Using detergent to prove Fermi’s beta decay math was flawless
• The cobalt-60 experiment that shattered the law of parity
• Being left out of the 1957 Nobel Prize despite 23 nominations
• Insisting on being called Professor Wu and fighting for equal pay