Yuan Tseh Lee (Chinese: 李遠哲; pinyin: Lǐ Yuǎnzhé; Wade–Giles: Li³ Yüan³-che²; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Lí Oán-tiat; born 19 November 1936) is a Taiwanese chemist.[4] Lee was born to a Hoklo Taiwanese family in Shinchiku City (modern-day Hsinchu city) in northern Taiwan, which was then under Japanese rule, to Lee Tze-fan, an artist, and Ts'ai P'ei (蔡配; Cài Péi), an elementary school teacher from Goseikō Town (梧棲港街), Taichū Prefecture (Wuqi, Taichung).Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius studied this phenomenon during the late 1880s, and stated the relations between reactive molecular encounters and rates of reactions (formulated in terms of activation energies).Other scientists at the time also stated a chemical reaction is fundamentally a mechanical event, involving the rearrangement of atoms and molecules during a collision.In 2010, Lee said that global warming would be much more serious than scientists previously thought, and that Taiwanese people needed to cut their per-capita carbon emissions from the current 12 tons per year to just three.[11] At the request of president Chen Shui-bian, Lee was Taiwan's representative in the 2002 APEC leaders' summit in Mexico.[12] In July 2024, Lee accepted president Lai Ching-te's invitation to serve as a consultant on the newly formed National Climate Change Strategy Committee.His elder brother Yuan-Chuan Lee has been a professor at Johns Hopkins University for 40 years and was awarded the honor Special Chair Lectureship in Academia Sinica in Taiwan.In January 2004, he and industrial tycoon Wang Yung-ching and theatre director Lin Hwai-min issued a joint statement to both Chen Shui-bian and Lien Chan.[20] Yuan Tseh Lee was awarded the Othmer Gold Medal in 2008 in recognition of his outstanding contributions to progress in chemistry and science.
Lee (upper far left) represented Taiwan at the 2004
APEC
leaders' summit.