A file photo of Yang Zhenning. (PHOTO / IC)

President Xi Jinping extended his best wishes to Yang Zhenning, also known as Yang Chen-ning, a physicist and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, as Yang celebrated his 100th birthday on Wednesday.

Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, asked officials from the Ministry of Education to visit Yang at Tsinghua University and present a flower basket to the scholar on Xi's behalf, wishing Yang a healthy and long life.

Yang received the Nobel Prize in Physics together with his colleague Tsung-dao Lee in 1957 for their theory of parity non-conservation in weak interaction.

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