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Like many children who come from families of immigrants or from families of scientists

or families who lived through war and destruction, I didn't realize how little I knew of her

life until it was too late to ask.

Jada Yuan was 19 when her grandmother died.

To her, Qin Shang Wu was the person who gave her a polka-dotted party dress and inspected

her report card.

She was grandma.

To the world, Dr. Wu was so much more.

Jada is now a reporter at the Washington Post, and these are excerpts from a piece she wrote

all about her grandmother.

I am not an expert on nuclear physics, but here's what I understand.

An experiment my grandmother conducted in 1956 proved a theory that shattered our fundamental

understanding of the physical world.

Now Jada's tackled plenty of complex pieces in her career, about arts, about culture,

or she even won a contest a few years back to travel to 52 destinations on the dime of

the New York Times.

But this piece was different.

It took months.

Jada had to gather data like a scientist and theorize the rest.

The piece, called Discovering Dr. Wu, chronicles her grandmother's life.

The piece is Jada new, and the piece is she only discovered after her death in 1997.

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