A May - December romance

He made headlines as the first Chinese to win a Nobel Prize for physics, in 1957.

Now, the 82-year-old Professor Yang Chen-Ning is shaking up the staid international scientific world again announcing that he is getting married to a 28 year old student.

Nobel prize-winning scientist Prof Yang Chen-Ning poses for a photo with Weng Fan on a beach.

Prof. Yang's fiancee, Weng Fan, is working towards a master's degree at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and Foreign Trade.

They are expected to get married in January 2005 after Weng Fan completes her thesis entitled--the translated thoughts of (who else but) Prof. Yang Chen-Ning.

Profesor Yang won the Nobel Prize for his work in physics on 'parity laws'. His discoveries led to important discoveries for research on elementary particles.

This will be the second marriage for both.

Prof Yang's wife, Du Zhili, the daughter of a prominent Kuomintang leader, died in October last year after a long illness. His new wife-to-be Weng is a divorcee.

Nobel Laureate Prof. Yang

One report said Prof. Yang wooed his new bride with a poem, describing her in flattering terms.

It read: 'With no cunning schemes but with sincere intentions; Brave, curious and with youthful dexterity; Dynamic, vigorous, with cute sense of humour; And, yet, possessing eternal youth.'

Another report said Prof. Yang recently sent an e-mail breaking the good news to a few friends.

He apparently said in the message that he's aware that the age gap will get tongues wagging but that he is mentally prepared for the onslaught.

Prof Yang said he was attracted to his fiancee's young mind not just her "biological age".

Weng Fan

According to the spokesman of a bi-monthly magazine, who is Prof Yang's good friend, the couple got engaged over the phone, and didn't have a public ceremony.

A former teacher described Weng as quiet, unassuming, bespectacled and neat.

Her classmate said she's very simple and honest, and looks much younger than even her age.

She first met Prof Yang when she was 19. Weng was assigned to look after Prof. Yang and his wife during an international physicist convention in Guangdong in 1995.

Prof Yang later recalled: "That is an arrangement made possible only by God." After the convention, Weng kept in touch with the elderly couple occasionally.

In February this year, she resumed her letters to him.

The rest, as they say, is history.