Chen-Ning Yang and Andrew Chi-Chih Yao have officially become academicians with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, after giving up their U.S. citizenship, according to the academy.

Yang and Yao are the first two foreign members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences who applied to become official academicians. In accordance with procedural rules, Yang joined the Division of Mathematics and Physics, while Yao became a member of the Division of Information Technical Sciences.

Yang received the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Tsung-dao Lee for their work on parity non-conservation of weak interaction. Yang also proposed the Yang-Mills Theory and created the Yang-Baxter Equation in the 1950s and '60s. Yao is a 2000 Turing Award winner who has long been engaged in the study of computer quantum information science.