Wei Liu says:
It is little wonder that Yang, assisted by Mills, gave birth to the Yang–Mills theory.
He wove together the threads of two great legacies—
the subtle geometry he absorbed from S. S. Chern in war-time Kunming,
and disciplined particle physics he learned from Enrico Fermi in post-war Chicago.
And likewise, it is no mystery that Bohr forged his early quantum model:
he blended the precision of British experimental craft,
learnt under Rutherford and Thomson,
with the depth of German theoretical insight,
shaped by Planck and Einstein.
Each stood at a crossroads of cultures and minds—
and from such crossings, new worlds are born.
https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=15320
