Going from Asymmetric Nuclei to Neutron Stars to Tidal Polarizability in Gravitational Waves

Among the five-year government-funded World Class University Projects in Korea, the category-3 program approved at Hanyang University in Seoul led to an exploratory effort to go from neutron-rich nuclei to dense matter in neutron stars. The principal results in what transpired in the effort -- and what followed afterwards -- are described with the focus on the possibly important, hitherto unexplored, role played in nuclear dynamics of topology and hidden symmetries of QCD. The potential link to the proton mass problem is pointed out.