Ye Wenjie (叶文洁)
Ye Wenjie is one of the protagonists of the novel. Her backstory constitutes a significant portion of the text, and it is told in various stages and forms throughout.
In 1967, as an astrophysics student and daughter of intellectuals, she is considered an enemy during the Cultural Revolution. She witnesses her father, Ye Zhetai, being beaten to death by the Red Guard, then is sent to labor in a deforestation project and on a radar base. She becomes disenchanted with humanity, and she secretly sends a message to aliens so that they can locate Earth and destroy humans. She then murders Commissar Lei and her husband, Yang Weining, to cover up the messages she exchanged with the alien planet Trisolaris.
Around 40 years later, in the present-day sections of the novel, Ye Wenjie is a retired astrophysics professor and the spiritual leader of the ETO. She tends to side with the Redemptionists, considering Trisolarans the Lord. After she learns the truth about Trisolaran civilization, she essentially stops speaking, and she walks to the Red Coast Base alone.
Despite periods of radical hatred of humanity, Ye Wenjie displays a fondness for children: she cares for the neighborhood kids, talking to them kindly on their level, and she helps the children around Red Coast Base to prepare for their exams. She preserves her daughter Yang Dong's room after her death. She is described as around 60 years old in the present-day sections, "graying, thin," and being both near- and far-sighted.
Wang Miao (汪淼)
Wang Miao is one of the protagonists of the novel. He is a well-respected applied research scientist whose primary focus is developing nanomaterials. Wang Miao considers himself to have a technical mind, but he is interested in philosophical questions, especially compared to Da Shi. In the VR game Three Body, he goes by the name "Hairen," a pun on his Chinese name, and then "Copernicus." He is recruited at various times by the Battle Command Center, the Frontiers of Science, and the ETO.
Wang is a landscape photography enthusiast who's gained moderate attention for his work, and at his workplace he tends to be a focused, serious boss who doesn't like delays. Though his family isn't mentioned often, he's married to a doctor named Li Yao, with whom he has a son called Dou Dou.
Shi Qiang (史强), "Da Shi"
Shi Qiang is a police captain in Beijing with a record of ill behavior and rough manners. He describes himself as "fearless out of ignorance," and Wang Miao observes that he is "direct and impolite." His bad reputation is mostly earned—past indiscretions include becoming friendly with gangs to get them to fight each other, torturing and disabling a suspect to extract information, and a lack of concern for hostages that resulted in the death of a family of three. Despite this, he maintains his position in the police force and in the Battle Command Center through his unconventional thinking and incredible powers of observation. He was a soldier in the army under General Chang, who calls him "Da Shi" (Big Shi) out of respect and says he is "dishonest and crooked...but useful," particularly in city policing and as an antiterrorism expert.
Da Shi is a heavy smoker and drinker, described as thickset with "a face full of bulging muscles" and "speaking in a loud voice." He drives a black VW Santana. Though Wang Miao initially dislikes him, the men develop a bond as they uncover Trisolaris's threat to humanity.
Chang Weisi (常伟思)
General Chang Weisi is a major general of the PLA who presides over meetings at the Battle Command Center. He asks Wang Miao to infiltrate the Frontiers of Science to investigate the scientists' suicides, and they work together to launch the attack on the Judgment Day. General Chang frequently reprimands Shi Qiang for his rudeness, but he respectfully calls him Da Shi and continues to rely on his skills.
Mike Evans (麦克·伊文斯)
Mike Evans is a billionaire from the West, son of an American oil magnate, and the creator of Pan-Species Communism. He meets Ye Wenjie while he is reforesting rural China in an attempt to protect an endangered bird species. Like Ye, he has been radicalized against humankind; when Ye tells him of the Trisolarans and their future invasion, he builds the ETO and a new Red Coast Base II on board the Judgment Day. It is revealed that Evans is a staunch Adventist and has been communicating with the Trisolarans, hiding their correspondence aboard the Judgment Day. It is stated that he dies aboard that ship during Operation Guzheng.
Evans has blond hair, green eyes, and tan skin.
Ding Yi (丁仪)
Dr. Ding Yi is a theoretical physicist who became famous for his discovery of the macroatom while studying ball lightning. He was Yang Dong's boyfriend before her suicide; the two of them enjoyed playing pool, but Ding Yi felt a distance between them. Since her death, he drinks more frequently and has trouble sleeping. He explains physics theories to Wang Miao.
Shen Yufei (申玉菲)
Shen Yufei is a Japanese physicist of Chinese descent who works for a Japanese company in Beijing. She is a prominent member of the Frontiers of Science, and she is a member of the ETO, generally siding with the Redemptionists. She is a woman of few words, and she's jokingly called the "female Hemingway" by her peers. She is clearly wealthy but lives in a plain house.
She is killed by Pan Han. Pan Han says he only kills her because she shot at him first when he came to her house to assassinate her husband, Wei Cheng. However, Ye Wenjie believes that Shen Yufei was also a target, since she knew the Adventists were contacting Trisolaris without the ETO's permission.
Wei Cheng (魏成)
Wei Cheng is Shen Yufei's husband and a math genius. He doesn't appear to have a job, but he does personal research on laboratory-level machinery from home. Wei Cheng is described as around 40 years old with the "look of a staid, honest intellectual." Despite his unassuming appearance, Wei is a prominent target of the Adventists within the ETO, because if he achieves his mathematical solution to the three-body problem, Trisolarans will not need to invade Earth.
He experiences a kind of synesthesia in which all numbers appear to him as a three-dimensional shape. Despite being a math prodigy, he has little enthusiasm for anything. After Shen Yufei's death, Wei Cheng seeks police protection and tells his life story to Wang Miao and Shi Qiang.
Pan Han (潘寒)
Pan Han is one of the most prominent members of the Frontiers of Science. He is a famous biologist who successfully predicted, in detail, the effects of genetic modification, including birth defects and ecological disasters. He created China's first experimental community, "Pastoral China," in which 3,000+ people live off of urban trash. He believes that technological progress is a disease, and he appears to promote de-urbanization and building a new agricultural society.
In reality, Pan Han is a radical Adventist and the head of the Environment Branch of the ETO, which aims to "exploit and create environmental problems" to make people hate science. He intends for humanity to be destroyed by the Trisolarans. He leads an in-person meeting between prominent Three Body players, and he is a powerful voice within ETO meetings. Pan Han is executed at Ye Wenjie's orders for killing Shen Yufei.
Yang Dong (杨冬)
Yang Dong was an eccentric theoretical physicist who worked primarily with superstring model testing. She refused to give interviews and was extremely reserved, to the point that fellow scientists were surprised to learn she was a woman and speculated that she was autistic; even her boyfriend, Ding Yi, describes her as a distant star.
Yang Dong was the daughter of Ye Wenjie and Yang Weining, conceived at Red Coast Base. Though she's important to the plot, she does not appear in the novel. She commits suicide with sleeping pills two days before the start of Part II: Three Body, after the results of her experiments prove that there is no fundamental basis for physics. It's later revealed that these results were altered by sophons sent by the Trisolarans.
Though Wang Miao and Yang Dong never spoke, he did see her once at a particle accelerator, and he was enchanted by her.
Sha Ruishan (沙瑞山)
Dr. Sha Ruishan is one of Ye Wenjie's former students. He now works at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' National Astronomical Center, creating a map of the cosmic microwave background. He occasionally works as a tour guide for the center. At Ye Wenjie's request, Sha Ruishan lets Wang Miao observe the cosmic microwave background as it flickers; though he wants to understand the cause of the flickering, he accepts Wang Miao's warning and doesn't demand an explanation.
Colonel Stanton (斯坦顿)
Colonel Stanton is an officer of the US Marine Corps and an expert in special ops. He is the commander in charge of Operation Guzheng. His suggestions are typically militant, such as the neutron bomb. He is intensely angered by Da Shi, but he comes to admire his ingenuity, giving him a box of cigars at the end of the meeting.
Stanton and Wang Miao travel to the Panama Canal for Operation Guzheng, where Stanton distracts Wang from the death about to occur on the Judgment Day. He speaks on the insignificance of his prior experiences at war in comparison to the future conflict with Trisolaris. Stanton leaves before the operation is complete.
Ye Zhetai
Ye Zhetai is a physics professor at Tsinghua University in the 1960s and a proponent of fundamental/theoretical physics. He refuses to repent, kill himself, or become numb during the struggle sessions of the Cultural Revolution. He defends Einstein's theory of relativity and the legitimacy of the Big Bang theory, so he's beaten to death by members of the Red Guard. Ye Zhetai is shown to be proud but also an effective and thoughtful teacher.
Ye Zhetai is Ye Wenjie and Ye Wenxue's father, and Shao Lin's husband.
Shao Lin
Shao Lin is a physics professor at Tsinghua University who was "too smart" to achieve much academically. She perceived a shift in the political landscape and distanced herself from "reactionary" theories (for example, teaching Ohm's law as "resistance law" and attributing its discovery to the wisdom of the working masses). Before the Cultural Revolution, she often taught class in an elegant qipao, but she adopts the aesthetic of the Cultural Revolution despite not being completely accepted by the revolutionaries.
Shao Lin speaks out against her husband, Ye Zhetai, at the struggle session where he's killed. She suffers a mental breakdown afterward, but she recovers quickly and survives "in the tiny cracks of politics," remarrying and eventually returning to teaching. Ye Wenjie attempts to reconnect with her after Yang Dong's birth, but Shao Lin refuses to discuss responsibility for Ye Zhetai's death, so Ye Wenjie never returns.
Shao Lin is Ye Wenjie and Ye Wenxue's mother, and Yang Dong's grandmother.
Yang Weining (杨卫宁)
Yang Weining is the chief engineer at Red Coast Base when Ye Wenjie is added to the project. He was one of Ye Zhetai's graduate students when Ye Wenjie was a first-year in college, though he distanced himself from theoretical physics and focused on application. He and Ye Wenjie grow close at Red Coast Base and get married. Ye Wenjie kills him to ensure the secrecy of Trisolaran contact. Ye Wenjie gives birth to his daughter, Yang Dong, after his death.
Commissar Lei Zhicheng (雷志成)
Commissar Lei oversees Red Coast Base. He is the person to first invite Ye Wenjie to work at the facility. An intellectual turned politician, Lei uses Ye’s brilliance and political exile to publish her research for himself, furthering his own career. He initially pretends to befriend Ye, but he is actually suspicious of her, and he thinks that telling her the true nature of Red Coast Base is a mistake.
He discovers Ye Wenjie's transmission to the Trisolarans, as well as their response. To keep the contact secret, Ye Wenjie murders Commissar Lei and Yang Weining by sawing through a rope they are suspended on.
