Yun Wang

Yun Wang is a poet, cosmologist, and translator of Chinese classics into English. Her diverse works are unified in her pursuit of truth, beauty, and goodness in an infinite Universe. She writes poetry from a cosmologist's perspective. She translates Chinese classics into English as a scholar of Chinese and a poet. All her books (except for the cosmology textbook) are for the same general audience: from the pondering intellectual to the curious student, from kindred spirits to fellow citizens of the world.

Wang began writing poetry as a child. She has authored three poetry books, "The Book of Mirrors" (Winner of the Twenty-Sixth White Pine Press Poetry Prize, 2021), "The Book of Totality" (Salmon Poetry Press, 2015), and "The Book of Jade" (winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize, Story Line Press, 2002), as well as two poetry chapbooks: "Horse by the Mountain Stream" (Word Palace Press, 2016) and "The Carp" (Bull Thistle Press, 1994).

Wang's book of poetry translation, "Dreaming of Fallen Blossoms: Tune Poems of Su Dong-Po", was published by White Pine Press in 2019. Her translation of Dao De Jing (in collaboration with Li-Young Lee) was published by W.W. Norton in 2024. Both books include the Chinese original face-to-face with the English translation. The Chinese original of Dao De Jing is poetry, as well as profound philosophy.

Wang attended Tsinghua University in Beijing to study physics at age sixteen. She received a Ph.D. in Physics from Carnegie Mellon University, and held postdoctoral positions at the University of Florida, NASA/Fermilab Astrophysics Center, and Princeton University Observatory. She was a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Oklahoma until 2017, and a Senior Research Scientist at Caltech since 2015. Wang was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for her leadership in dark energy research in 2012. She is the author of "Dark Energy" (Wiley/VCH, 2010), a graduate textbook, and leads science on space missions to explore cosmic mysteries.