Celebrating AAPI Heritage Month
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, celebrating the cultures and contributions of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders and their impact on American history. Established in 1992 by an act of Congress, AAPI Heritage Month is celebrated in May to coincide with the first Japanese immigrants to the US in May 1843 and the May 1869 completion of the transcontinental railroad, which was built mostly by the labor of Chinese immigrants.1
The vital participation of early Asian immigrants in American history is undoubtedly important, but in the nearly two hundred years since, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Native Hawaiians have left their mark not only on the US but also the world through their contributions in STEM that have had an impact on all our lives.
While there are too many contributors to name in the scope of this post, we honor the legacies of three individuals, all with connections to California, whose work shaped science and engineering:
- Chien-Shiung Wu: Physicist
- Ellison Onizuka: Astronaut and engineer
- Flossie Wong-Staal: Microbiologist
Illustrated books about or featuring them are available for kids to learn more about their lives, and we encourage you to check them out at your local library branch or pick them up on a visit to your local independent bookstore.
The First Lady of Physics, Chien-Shiung Wu
Physicist Chien-Shiung Wu was born in 1912 in a little town near Shanghai. Despite a wider lack of support for girls and women pursuing higher education at the time, particularly in the sciences, her parents recognized her intelligence and nurtured her talents from an early age.
Trained at first as a teacher after graduating from a school for girls, Wu ultimately enrolled at what would later be known as the National Central University, in Nanjing, and graduated in 1934 with top honors, studying physics.
Photo Credit: Biography(.)com
With support from her family, Wu arrived in the United States in 1936 to continue her studies. While she originally planned to study at the University of Michigan, whose student union did not welcome women, a visit to the more inclusive UC Berkeley campus changed her trajectory. Her thesis, focused on fission products of uranium and the identification of two xenon isotopes, would later lead her to work on the Manhattan Project.2
After completing her PhD in 1940, Dr. Wu moved east with her husband, and after a stint at Smith College, joined the physics department at Princeton University as its first female faculty member. In 1944, Dr. Wu joined the Manhattan Project at Columbia University.
Contributions to Nuclear Physics
Dr. Wu spent the rest of her career in the physics department at Columbia. During World War II, Dr. Wu worked to improve radiation detection of Geiger counters and enriching large amounts of uranium needed for the atomic bomb.3 After the war, Dr. Wu turned to her own research. She designed an experiment to test the theory of parity, a principle that states identical nuclear particles act identically. When the scientists who asked her to conduct the experiment were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1957, her contribution went unacknowledged. Despite the lack of recognition for this major work, she received many awards in her lifetime and became the first woman president of the American Physical Society in 1975.
Learn More: Queen of Physics: How Wu Chien Shiung Helped Unlock the Secrets of the Atom, by Teresa Robeson, illustrated by Rebecca Huang, Hachette Book Group, 2019
Ellison Onizuka: The First Asian American Astronaut
Ellison Onizuka, a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force, was born in Hawaii Territory to Japanese American parents in 1946. Onizuka studied aerospace engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he earned an MS degree. He joined the US Air Force in 1970 as a flight test engineer and test pilot at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento.4
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Contributions to Space Flight
At McClellan, Onizuka trained others at the Flight Test Center as an instructor. In 1978, he joined Group 8, NASA’s first astronaut recruits for the space shuttle era, along with the first women and Black Americans to become astronauts.5 He flew a classified mission for the Department of Defense in 1985 and spent seventy-four hours in space. Unfortunately, Onizuka’s career with NASA was cut much too short, as he was one of those aboard the space shuttle Challenger when it exploded just after liftoff in January 1986. Onizuka was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 2004.
Learn More: An Astronaut’s Legacy: The Story of Ellison S. Onizuka, by Lisa Nikaido Arakaki, illustrated by Mitchell Fong, Nikkei Writers Guild, 2012
Flossie Wong-Staal: Pioneering Molecular Biologist
Flossie Wong-Staal was born Wong Yee Ching in China in 1946. Inspired to move to the West Coast of the United States by American TV, she studied molecular biology at UCLA and anglicized her name to Flossie, the name of a recent typhoon. After earning her PhD, she began working at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1973, studying cloning techniques of genes.
Photo Credit: National Women’s Hall of Fame
Contributions to Medicine
Wong-Staal, a former scientist at the NIH, spent her career studying cancer and infectious diseases. Early on, she discovered a viral cause of cancer. Later, her team was credited with proving that HIV causes AIDS. She is known as the first person who cloned HIV and determined how its genes function, leading researchers to understand how the virus evades the immune system. Later, she studied hepatitis C, a disease of the liver. By helping to develop better treatment options, her work helped improve the lives of patients with HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and cancer.
Learn More: Featured in Everyday Superheroes: Women in STEM Careers, by Erin Twamley and Joshua Sneidman, illustrated by A Collective, Wise Ink, 2022
This month, we celebrate the trailblazers in STEM from the AAPI community, but their stories serve to inspire kids of all backgrounds today to achieve their dreams and become the successful scientists, engineers, and mathematicians of the future. To further spark their curiosity, sign your child up for one of STEMful’s programs.
Footnotes:
1 “Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month,” accessed April 7, 2026, https://asianpacificheritage.gov/About.html.
2 Noemie Benczer-Koller, “Chien-Shiung Wu: 1912–1997,” National Academy of Sciences, 2009, https://www.nasonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wu-chien-shiung.pdf.
3 “Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu, The First Lady of Physics,” National Park Service, updated December 20, 2022, https://www.nps.gov/people/dr-chien-shiung-wu-the-first-lady-of-physics.htm.
4 Valerie Neal, “Ellison Shoji Onizuka: The First Asian American in Space,” National Air and Space Museum, May 24, 2024, https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/ellison-onizuka-first-asian-american-space.
5 Neal, “Ellison Shoji Onizuka.”
6 Georgina Kenyon, “Flossie Wong-Staal,” Lancet Infectious Diseases 20, no. 9 (2020): 1022, https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30645-9.