What did paul chu discovered?

Answer 1

Nothing. Ruling Meng, who worked for Chu and provided the bulk of the testimony in the defense of Chu's patent claim, testified in an affidavit to a federal district court in 2006 that she had perjured herself under pressure. Chu himself, in several papers from the mid '90s* (after the discovery period had closed in the patent interference), also discredits the very story the University of Houston gave the patent courts in his defense. Chu and the University of Houston have told about a dozen different fundamentally different stories over the years. Clearly, the true story was not adequate. The discovery was actually the result of a simple idea by a 22-year old graduate student in Huntsville by the name of Jim Ashburn. Ashburn left science completely after the completion of his Ph. D.

*For example, see http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel4%2F77%2F13416%2F00614424.pdf%3Farnumber%3D614424&authDecision=-203

Answer 2

Here is more than you would ever want to know: ethw.org/First-Hand:Discovery_of_Superconductivity_at_93_K_in_YBCO:_The_View_from_Ground_Zero