physics

King-Wai Yau

King-Wai Yau is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand King-Wai Yau rather than just read about it. In short: King-Wai Yau (Chinese: 游景威; Jyutping: jau4 ging2 wai1; pinyin: Yóu Jǐngwēi; born October 27, 1948) is a Chinese-born American neuroscientist and Professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. Biography Born in Guangzhou (formerly called Canton), Guangdong, China, he was the sixth of seven children.

Key takeaways

King-Wai Yau belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect King-Wai Yau to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of King-Wai Yau from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

King-Wai Yau (Chinese: 游景威; Jyutping: jau4 ging2 wai1; pinyin: Yóu Jǐngwēi; born October 27, 1948) is a Chinese-born American neuroscientist and Professor of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland.

Biography Born in Guangzhou (formerly called Canton), Guangdong, China, he was the sixth of seven children. His family relocated to Hong Kong within months of his birth. His father, a businessman, died when Yau was only five years old. He attended secondary school in Buddhist Wong Fung Ling College and St. Paul's Co-educational College in Hong Kong, before entering University of Hong Kong Faculty of Medicine to study medicine. Not wanting to be a physician, however, he departed for the United States in 1968 after only one year of medical study. He received an A.B. in physics (University Scholar; Phi Beta Kappa) from Princeton in 1971 and a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Harvard in 1975, completing his doctoral thesis under John G. Nicholls, a former student of Bernard Katz. He did postdoctoral work with Denis A. Baylor at Stanford University, then with Sir Alan L. Hodgkin at University of Cambridge, United Kingdom. Thereafter, he was on the faculty of University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (1981–86), rising to Professor of Physiology and Biophysics in 1985. In 1986, he became Professor of Neuroscience and Investigator of Howard Hughes Medical Institute (1986-2004) at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he has been since.

Scientific contributions He is known for discoveries on how light and odor are sensed in the eye and the nose, triggering neural signals to be transmitted to the brain. He has greatly elucidated the properties of the light responses and their underlying phototransduction mechanisms in retinal rods and cones, as well as in intrinsically-photosensitive retinal ganglion cells which express the photopigment, melanopsin, to mediate mostly non-image vision such as pupillary light reflex and photoentrainment of the circadian rhythm. He has made similarly important discoveries on olfactory transduction in the receptor neurons of the nasal olfactory epithelium. His work impacts broadly on understanding G-protein signaling at a quantitative level. His investigations on the spontaneous activity of rod and cone pigments have provided a physicochemical explanation for why our vision does not extend into Infrared wavelengths. He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a Member of Academia Sinica, Taiwan.

Selected honors & awards 1978, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow 1980, Visiting Fellow, Trinity College, Cambridge, United Kingdom 1980, Rank Prize in Optoelectronics, The Rank Prize Funds, United Kingdom 1993, Friedenwald Award, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) 1994, Alcon Award in Vision Research, Alcon Research Institute 1995, Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences 1996, Magnes Prize, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 2004, Teacher of the Year, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine 2005, Alcon Award in Vision Research (second time), Alcon Research Institute 2006, Balazs Prize, International Society for Eye Research (ISER) 2008, António Champalimaud Vision Award, The Champalimaud Foundation, Portugal 2010, Member, National Academy of Sciences 2012, CNIB Chanchlani Global Vision Research Award, Canada 2013, Alexander Hollaender Award in Biophysics, National Academy of Sciences 2016, RRF Paul Kayser International Award for Retinal Research (ISER) 2017, Daniel Nathans Scientific Innovator Award, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine 2018, Member, National Academy of Medicine 2019, Helen Keller Prize for Vision Research, Helen Keller Foundation & BrightFocus Foundation 2019, Beckman-Argyros Vision Award, Arnold & Mabel Beckman Foundation 2022, Member, Academia Sinica, Taiwan 2026, Joram Piatigorsky Lecture and Award, National Eye Institute, NIH

Highly-Cited Papers Articles with over 500 citations according to Google Scholar [1] as of May 6, 2017:

1979 "The membrane current of single rod outer segments", 607 citations 1979 "Responses of retinal rods to single photons", 819 citations 1989 "Cyclic GMP-activated conductance of retinal photoreceptor cells", 590 citations 1990 "Primary structure and functional expression of a cyclic nucleotide-activated channel from olfactory neurons", 672 citations 1998 "Identification of ligands for olfactory receptors by functional expression of a receptor library", 534 citations 2002 "Melanopsin-containing retinal ganglion cells: architecture, projections, and intrinsic photosensitivity", 1579 citations 2003 "Melanopsin and rod–cone photoreceptive systems account for all major accessory visual functions in mice", 838 citations 2003 "Diminished pupillary light reflex at high irradiances in melanopsin-knockout mice", 608 citations 2005 "Melanopsin-expressing ganglion cells in primate retina signal colour and irradiance and project to the LGN", 798 citations 2006 "Central projections of melanopsin‐expressing retinal ganglion cells in the mouse", 518 citations

References

External links Vision Award, Champalimaud Foundation (2008) Alcon Research Award past recipients (1994, 2005) Friedenwald Award, ARVO - Association for Research in Vision & Ophthalmology (1993) Rank Prize in Optoelectronics (1980) King-Wai Yau laboratory web site

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with King-Wai Yau

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what King-Wai Yau claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to King-Wai Yau before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about King-Wai Yau ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of King-Wai Yau

In research: King-Wai Yau appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses King-Wai Yau in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: King-Wai Yau is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1948 births, Alumni of the University of Hong Kong, American biophysicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for King-Wai Yau outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study King-Wai Yau in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what King-Wai Yau means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain King-Wai Yau out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is King-Wai Yau in simple terms?

Why does King-Wai Yau matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study King-Wai Yau?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on King-Wai Yau.