Named in honor of the theoretical physicist Tsung-Dao Lee (1926– ), professor at Columbia University, winner of the Nobel prize in physics in 1957 {together with C. N. Yang, see planet  (3421)}. Among his outstanding works is the discovery of parity and other symmetry violations in weak interactions. From the late 1940s onward, he made many other landmark contributions to weak interactions. In the 1970s and 1980s Lee established the field of nontopological solitons and discovered a large class of new astronomical solutions of general relativity, called soliton stars. (M 27733) _ _.