Ding Yi
Names: Ding YiDr. DingMaster Ding
First appears in Book 1: The Three-Body Problem, chapter 4 (4)
Appearances
What you know
Book 1: The Three-Body Problem
- Ch 4Ding Yi is a theoretical physicist famous for discovering the macroatom while studying ball lightning, and was Yang Dong's boyfriend.
- Ch 4Ding was driven to the meeting by the same driver who now takes Wang, which prompts Wang to visit Ding's address.
- Ch 5Ding Yi is a theoretical physicist who bought a new three-bedroom apartment in hope that Yang Dong would start a family with him; she never did.
- Ch 5Ding Yi drinks brandy alone in his unfinished apartment and warns Wang that learning more will draw him deeper into trouble.
- Ch 5Ding Yi says the physicists' deaths had nothing to do with the Frontiers of Science, and that two of the dead never had contact with it.
- Ch 7Ding asks Wang to visit Yang Dong's elderly mother, saying he cannot face anything reminding him of Yang Dong again.
- Ch 30Ding explains that higher dimensions are locked in the micro scale, and that mastering them marks an advanced civilization.
- Ch 30Ding is amazed at the accuracy needed to hit Earth with two protons from four light-years, and refuses to tell Wang more.
- Ch 30Ding was invited to the interrogation because of his connection to Ye's daughter.
- Ch 31Explains that ball lightning weapons cannot kill everyone simultaneously and may hover before releasing energy, giving the crew time to destroy data.
- Ch 34Ding Yi despairs that the sophons' blockade of particle accelerators means physics is finished, leaving him with nothing to do; he treats it as the end of the world.
Book 2: The Dark Forest
- Ch 2Physicist who tells the media that sophon panic is baseless and that sophons can only affect the macroscopic world in a lower-dimensional unfolded state.
- Ch 4Ding Yi heads the third branch of the controlled fusion project and is travelling to the station to recover cosmic ray catchers.
- Ch 4Ding Yi complains that the old chemical-rocket aerospace industry holds power and sidelines fusion researchers.
- Ch 5Ding Yi, a theoretician, favors radiation-drive spacecraft and believes tokamaks are a dead end; his team achieved a controlled fusion breakthrough.
- Ch 6Ding Yi failed to find a way around sophon interference in physics, then entered hibernation to wake at the Doomsday Battle and see Trisolaran technology.
- Ch 7Aged eighty-three, he threatened suicide to be chosen to examine the Trisolaran probe up close, as discoverer of the macroatom and inventor of controlled fusion.
- Ch 8A physicist from two centuries ago who still teaches university physics; he resembles Einstein and is chosen to be first to touch the droplet.
- Ch 8Acting on a bad feeling, he asked that Quantum be put into a deep-sea state while he examines the droplet.
- Ch 8He is reluctant to go on the dangerous expedition and thinks humanity chases vanity, but agrees to do it.
- Ch 8Ding Yi regrets that humanity's physics has been blinded by the sophons, and finds comfort in the idea that physical laws remain unchanging.
- Ch 8Ding Yi deduces that the droplet's molecules are fixed by strong interaction, and realizes it is a weapon, not a messenger of peace.
- Ch 8Ding Yi shouts for the fleet to run, but the warning cannot be heard because communications are jammed.
- Ch 8He ordered Quantum and Bronze Age into deep-sea state before the battle, which allowed them to survive.
Book 3: Death's End
- Ch 68Ding Yi preferred desolate places, believing life distracts physics, and held lectures in the desert.
- Ch 68He told Bai Aisi that civilizations' behavior can't be grasped through physics and hinted that physics' foundations may be illusory.
- Ch 68He suggested Yang Dong and others who killed themselves over sophon interference knew more than he did, and said he might have gone with her.
Connections
Key moments
- Book 1 · Ch 4Physicist suicides revealed
Chang reveals that all physicists on the list killed themselves in the last two months, the last being Yang Dong. Her note claims physics does not exist, and Wang is devastated.
- Book 1 · Ch 4Chang's warning about the end of humanity's luck
Chang walks Wang out and tells him that humanity's whole history has been fortunate but that this has ended. Wang then asks the driver to take him to Ding's address.
- Book 1 · Ch 5The pool table experiment
Ding Yi has Wang pocket the black ball five times in different places and times, illustrating that physical laws are invariant across space and time.
- Book 1 · Ch 5Ding reveals the accelerator crisis
Ding Yi explains that high-energy collision experiments now give inconsistent results, implying physics' laws may not be invariant. Wang understands why Yang Dong despaired.
- Book 1 · Ch 30Ding Yi explains micro dimensions
After the interrogation, Ding tells Wang about higher dimensions locked in the quantum realm and humanity's insignificance, then declines to say more and suggests drinking.
- Book 1 · Ch 31Meeting to plan the capture of Judgment Day
Military officers reject ball lightning, neutron bombs, nerve gas, concussion bombs and infrasound. Shi Qiang proposes a net of Flying Blade filaments across the canal; it is accepted and refined to the Gaillard Cut.
- Book 1 · Ch 34Drunken despair
Wang Miao and Ding Yi, very drunk, tell Da Shi that science is doomed by the sophons and toast humans as bugs about to go extinct.
- Book 1 · Ch 34Locust field lesson
Da Shi drives them to wheat fields in Hebei covered with locusts and asks if the human-Trisolaran gap exceeds that between humans and locusts. Moved by the bugs' resilience, Wang and Ding pour out wine, thank him and resolve to return to work.
- Book 2 · Ch 4Zhang Beihai flies to the ISS
Zhang Beihai boards High Frontier, meets Ding Yi, discusses aerospace politics and the sophon blockade, and reaches orbit, first seeing the starfield.
- Book 2 · Ch 5Fusion breakthrough and strategy debate
Zhang Beihai visits Ding Yi after the fusion breakthrough and discusses the media-propelled versus radiation-drive spacecraft split, fearing a wrong foundation for the space fleet.
- Book 2 · Ch 6Passing of the Golden Age generation
Over the following decades, key figures retire, die or enter hibernation, and the Golden Age generation vanishes from living memory.
- Book 2 · Ch 8Ding Yi requests a deep-sea state
Ding Yi, uneasy, asks that Quantum enter a deep-sea state during his visit. The fleet approves, and Quantum and Bronze Age will do so once the examination team departs.
- Book 2 · Ch 8Expedition shuttle departs
Ding Yi, Xizi and two officers from the European and North American Fleets leave Quantum by shuttle toward the droplet.
- Book 2 · Ch 8Expedition examines the droplet aboard Mantis
The team boards Mantis and tests the droplet, finding its surface perfectly smooth at ten million times magnification and unmarked by a claw or pick. Ding Yi concludes it is held by strong interaction and is a threat.
- Book 3 · Ch 68Bai Aisi's memory of Ding Yi
In a nightmare, Bai Aisi relives Ding Yi's last talk in the desert, where Ding Yi gave him his belongings and money for hibernation, then the desert collapsed into a pit.