About the museum

The Nobel Prize has been one of the most influential awards in shaping humanity over the past century, and Chinese laureates have long held an important place in many fields — Tsung-Dao Lee, Chen-Ning Yang, Samuel C. C. Ting, Steven Chu. Among them, Professor Yuan Tseh Lee, the 1986 laureate in Chemistry, was born and raised in Taiwan.

Professor Lee entered National Taiwan University in 1955, studying first in the Department of Chemical Engineering and later in Chemistry. After a master's degree from National Tsing Hua University he earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work with the crossed molecular beam technique, observing the chemical reactions of colliding molecules. In 1994 he returned to Taiwan as President of Academia Sinica, where he pressed for basic scientific research and academic exchange and markedly raised the country's international academic standing.

National Taiwan University has long promoted top-level international academic exchange, inviting Nobel laureates to campus. In 2023, the Center for General Education launched the NTU Royal Palm Lecture Series to host campus-wide talks by leading scholars, opening with a lecture by 2014 Nobel Physics laureate Hiroshi Amano. Later speakers included 2004 Nobel Chemistry laureate Aaron Ciechanover, drawing strong responses on and off campus and broadening the academic horizons of faculty and students.

To sustain this effort, Mr. Raymond Soong founded the Raymond Soong Chair Professorship of Distinguished Research in 2023, bringing Alain Aspect, James E. Rothman, James A. Robinson, and other Nobel laureates to Taiwan, enhancing Taiwan's visibility and influence in academia and technological research. In 2025, the initiative further aligned with the Taiwan Bridges Program, with NTU organizing the opening ceremony and six lectures. It later expanded into the Taiwan Higher Education and Nobel Laureates Association, integrating academic and industrial resources to sustain exchanges with leading scholars and help illuminate the road ahead in the age of AI.

President Yuan Tseh Lee has worked for many years to open Taiwan's academic exchange to the world. At his initiative, and with the support of Raymond Soong, founder of Lite-On Technology, the Taiwan Bridges Program was launched with President Ching-te Lai as honorary chair. Anchored by National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica, joined by ten further academic and research institutions across Taiwan, and developed with the International Peace Foundation, it invited 31 Nobel laureates to Taiwan over six months from late 2025 for a series of lectures and exchanges — a conversation between Taiwan's academic community, its society, and some of the world's leading scientists.

Within the programme, NTU took on the work of drawing it together: the opening ceremony and six of the lectures, in physics, chemistry, physiology or medicine and economic sciences, held under the Raymond Soong Chair Professorship of Distinguished Research. What came out of the exchanges between speakers, teachers and students in those rooms will bear on Taiwan's academic foundations for a long time.