Lee, Yuan Tseh (1936– )

Taiwanese chemist who contributed much to the field of chemical reaction dynamics. He put in much of the groundwork for Dudley Herschbach's development of the molecular beam technique and shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1986 with Herschbach and John Polanyi for his development of the dynamics of chemical elementary processes.

Born in Hsinchu, Taiwan, Lee was educated at Taiwan University and at the University of California, Berkeley, where he gained his PhD working under Herschbach. He became a professor at the University of Chicago in 1974, then accepted the post of professor of chemistry at California University. In March 2000 he declined the position of prime minister in Taiwan, offered to him by the newly elected president Chen Shui-bian. Lee is president of Taiwan's Academia Sinica, and a government adviser on education and relations with China.