What was even more shocking than how Li Wei won the world’s highest prize in theoretical physics at such a young age of 35 years old was the fact that he was found dead at home due to committing su*cide the day before the award ceremony.
In his letter to his student Jackie, he wrote: I have only been doing one thing crazily all these years, and physics is all I have. On the day it ends, the darkness will completely engulf me.
Many years after graduation, Zhang Man saw a love letter in her physics book while sorting her things out. It was signed by Li Wei. After his su*cide, she couldn’t eat or sleep at night, until one day she woke up and found herself back at the age of sixteen.
–Later, Li Wei, who became a leader in the world of physics again, said in an interview with global media, “I survived because of two essential things in my life: physics and her. Physics gave me the ability to think rationally in the darkness, and she gave me my light.”
