BEIJING, Dec. 17 (Xinhuanet) -- Nobel Prize laureate Chen Ning Yang, 82, will marry a 28-year-old post-graduate from south China's Guangdong Province next month, an official with Beijing-based Tsinghua University announced here Friday.

Nobel winning scientist Chen Ning Yang (L) poses for a photo with Wong Fan on a beach. [sina]

    As marriage is a private matter, the official hopes people in all social sectors will respect Yang's choice.

    Yang's fiancee, named Weng Fan, is working for a master degree at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and Foreign Trade. They are expected to get married in January 2005 at the end of Yang's current semester courses at Tsinghua University.

    Yang's former wife died of illness in October 2003. Two months later, Yang retired from his post in the United States and settled down at Tsinghua University.

    As from September this year, Yang began giving lectures on basic physics to freshmen of Tsinghua University. He also offered guidance to post-graduates and attended all sorts of academic workshops.

    Chen Ning Yang, born in Hefei in east China's Anhui Province in1922, was awarded a scholarship for study abroad after graduation from China. In 1945 he entered the University of Chicago, where hereceived his doctorate in physics in 1948. In 1957 Yang shared theNobel Prize in Physics with his friend and colleague Tsung Dao Lee for their joint work in upsetting the principle of conservation ofparity as a fundamental law of nuclear physics.

    He was elected as the first foreign academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in June 1994. He was given the 1995 China International Science and Technology Cooperation Award. Enditem