Wu (wo?o), Chien-Shiung 1912-1997. Chinese-born American physicist who showed experimentally that parity is not conserved in beta decay, thus demonstrating that the principle of parity conservation does not hold for weak interactions.American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.Wu (wo?o), Chien-Shiung 1912-1997. Chinese-born American physicist. Her research on electron emission in the decay of radioactive elements led her to disprove a long-held law of physics, called the law of symmetry, which held that the laws of nature are always symmetrical.The American Heritage® Student Science Dictionary, Second Edition. Copyright © 2014 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.