New Superconductors Propel Chinese Physicists to Forefront

Hai-Hu Wen went to work as soon as he heard the news. In late February, the 44-year-old physicist at the Institute of Physics (IOP) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing learned from a colleague that researchers in Japan had discovered a new superconductor that carried electricity without resistance at a relatively balmy temperature of 26 kelvin. He immediately looked up the paper—via Google—and set his group to work. “We ordered the materials the same day,” Wen says. “Within 3 or 4 days, we had the first samples.”