Physics prodigy, 22, honored for discovery of 'magic angle'

Cao Yuan, a 22-year-old doctoral candidate in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was named one of the 10 people who mattered this year by the journal Nature on Wednesday for discovering a "magic angle" in graphene sheets that spurred a new field of superconductor physics.

The physics prodigy from Chengdu, Sichuan province, is the third Chinese scientist in five years to make Nature's list for pushing scientific development. Pan Jianwei, a world-leading quantum scientist, and Chen Hualan, an expert on bird flu, made the list in 2017 and 2013, respectively.

Cao finished his middle and high school curricula in two years. By age 18, he had completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, Anhui province. He then went to the United States to pursue a doctoral degree under MIT physics professor Pablo Jarillo-Herrero.