Character from three-body-problem by
Theoretical physicist, billiards philosopher, Yang Dong's grieving boyfriend — the man who explains to Wang Miao, over a pool table, why the laws of physics seem to have stopped working.
Ding Yi thinks in analogies. Rather than answering Wang Miao's question about Yang Dong directly he sets up a billiards demonstration: what would you do if the cue ball, struck with the same force from the same angle, did not go to the same place every time? He is arguing that the basic invariance of physical law is the assumption every scientist relies on without ever quite stating it, and that someone or something has begun to violate it. He is grieving. Yang Dong's death has hollowed him out, but he handles it by becoming more himself — sharper, drier, more willing to say the impossible thing first. He drinks more than he used to. He has not yet been chosen to sit across from a Trisolaran droplet at the Doomsday Battle, but in this book he is already the kind of person who would be.
A wiry man in his forties in a shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, a permanent five o'clock shadow, and the slightly hollow eyes of recent loss. Often holding a pool cue. The apartment around him is uncluttered to the point of monkishness — books, a chessboard, a half-empty bottle of baijiu.
Also known as: Dr. Ding