Yang, Chen Ning was born in Hefei, Anhui Province, China, in 1922. His father W.Z. Yang was a famous professor of mathematics in Tsinghua University, which is amongst the best universities in China. Yang was grown up in an atmosphere for studying.

Between 1937 to 1945, during the World War II, the imperialistic Japan invaded China. Over half of China was occupied. Many famous universities such as Tsinghua University and Peking University moved westwards to Kunming, where they joined together to form the National Southwest Associated University. Yang received his tertiary education there. He obtained his bachelor's degree in 1942 and master's degree in 1944.

In the National Southwest Associated University, Yang met T.D. Lee who later won the Nobel Prize with him. Lee was four years younger than Yang and was a bit shorter as well. After World War II, both of them obtained scholarships and went abroad to the University of Chicago in the United States. Enrico Fermi was the director of the Institute for Nuclear Studies (now named The Enrico Fermi Institute) at University of Chicago at that time. Yang wanted to study under the supervision of Fermi and therefore went directly to see him. However, Fermi declined Yang's request because Fermi was working on some "highly confidential matters". Fermi introduced Yang to E. Teller. In 1948, Yang obtained his doctorate degree.

After Yang had worked at the University of Chicago as a lecturer for one year, he was appointed professor at Princeton University. In the spring of 1956, Yang and Lee read a large amount of experimental data in elementary-particle physics and did analysis on it, attempting to seek evidence for the conservation of parity. They found that in processes of weak interaction, there is no evidence of parity conservation. They therefore brought this question forward in the summer of 1956, hoping that the experimentalists would provide an answer. Later, C.S. Wu, an associate professor at Colombia University, performed an experiment in the National Standard Bureau. She showed that the golden rule of parity conservation no longer holds generally. It is not true in weak interaction. Because of this sophisticated experiment, C.S. Wu was promoted to professor and Lee and Yang obtained the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957. In the same year, they obtained the Albert Einstein Commemorative Award.

Yang is quiet, humble and cheerful. He got married with Chih Li Tu in 1950. They have two sons and a daughter. Ms. Tu is also a Chinese. The couple made great contributions to the academic interaction between China and the United States in the 1970s.

Yang returned to Beijing the first time in 1971. He has visited China many times since then and has been contributing to science and science education in China. He said, "There are thousands of capable people in China. If they all do their best, China will make great contributions to the global civilization in the 21st century."