A Man of Science and Engineering in Troubled Times Wandering in the Late Qing Dynasty

As soon as he mentioned the Nobel Prize to Mendeleev, Li Yu met people from the Swedish Academy of Sciences when he was visiting Pavlov.

The selection of the Nobel Prize in later generations requires the nominees to be kept secret for 50 years, so it is impossible to know who has been nominated.

Don't believe many rumors. If you want to know, you can only wait for the decryption 50 years later.

However, the system at the beginning of the twentieth century was not so sound.

Nominations for the Nobel Prize generally begin in the second half of the year before the selection, and no one can nominate themselves for the Nobel Prize.

Then around February and March, candidates will be screened and reviewed, and the winners will be announced in October.

The selection process is a selection committee of about ten people who vote to determine the winners.

When Li Yu was walking in St. Petersburg University, someone stopped him: "You are Mr. Li Yu, right? I never expected to meet you here."

The other party was a young man, and Li Yu didn't know him, so he asked doubtfully, "Your Excellency?"

"My name is Katz, you probably don't know me, but I saw you when I was in Sweden, and I was there when you were awarded the Mathematics Prize by the king. But I'm just an ordinary worker of the Academy of Sciences, so I don't want to be in the corner It's so easy to see."

Li Yu really had no impression, and apologized, "Sorry, I really didn't notice."

Katz didn't take it seriously: "It's normal for a scholar like you not to see me."

Li Yu asked, "What is Mr. Katz doing here?"

Katz said: "On behalf of the Academy of Sciences, I am here to send formal applications for nominations to several Russian professors and scholars. It happens that Professor Mendeleev and Professor Pavlov are both in this university."

"Nobel Prize?" Li Yu asked.

Katz said: "Yes, the two professors are authorities in chemistry and physiology respectively, so they should be nominated."

Mendeleev has been nominated several times, but he has never been awarded the chemist, and it is a pity that he did not live a few more years, otherwise he would have received it.

And Pavlov will win the Nobel Prize next year, and he is also the first Russian Nobel Prize winner.

Li Yu said: "It's not enough to write directly, but to come here in person."

Katz said: "The status of the two professors is too high, and the distance is so close, it is better to come here in person."

The distance between Stockholm and St. Petersburg is indeed very close, only separated by the Baltic Sea.

Li Yu said, "It just so happens that I also want to meet Professor Pavlov, let's go together."

As soon as they arrived outside Pavlov's laboratory, they heard loud arguments inside.

Pavlov's angry voice came out: "You are really worse than a dirty dog!"

"I'm sure I'm not a dirty dog, you should at least use caviar as a test item!" Another voice was not to be outdone.

"Caviar?" Pavlov also raised his voice and said, "I'm a scientist, not a rich person. I can't afford caviar myself. Why do I use this kind of thing as a test object?"

"Then you don't deserve me to cooperate with the experiment!" Another voice continued to argue loudly.

Li Yu and Katz looked at each other, wondering if they should go in or not.

A student outside the door recognized Li Yu: "It's Professor Li Yu!"

Li Yu turned around and remembered that they were the two college students who were with Pavlov when they first came to St. Petersburg University.

"Hello," Li Yu said, "Besides, I'm not a professor."

But the students said: "Your level is more than enough to be a professor."

Li Yu asked, "What happened inside?"

The student laughed and said, "Professor Pavlov's younger brother Nikolai must come to work in the professor's laboratory, but he didn't know anything, so he said that he could be an experimental subject."

Li Yu asked in surprise, "Experimental subject?"

The student said: "It is the object of the conditioned reflex experiment. Professor Pavlov used dogs before, but his brother Nikolai said why not use humans to experiment."

Li Yu didn't know whether to laugh or cry, but there were still people vying to be human experiment subjects.

From the student's later narration, Li Yu finally knew what was going on.

Although Pavlov was brilliant, this younger brother was really incompetent and had been unemployed at home.

Now Pavlov has become famous and is in charge of a laboratory, so the younger brother wants to work in Pavlov's laboratory.

But he obviously didn't understand science at all, and he couldn't do anything there, so Pavlov refused.

Who knew that Pavlov's mother doted on this younger brother a little bit, and said to him: "You are better to ask your younger brother to go with you to study with those bastards. Your younger brother is the most greedy, and no one drools as much as him."

Pavlov did a conditioned reflex test by giving food and then the dog salivated.

But although they knew the process of answering the questions in the experiment, they obviously couldn't understand the original intention of the experiment.

Pavlov had a hard time accepting this ridiculous proposal: "Please don't know me, I know how to work."

But his mother insisted: "But your decision will keep your unemployed brother at home, and give jobs to dirty dogs you don't even know!"

Well, she thinks those dogs are working too...

Pavlov was very helpless and had no choice but to accept this so-called "human experiment" absurd suggestion.

But when it came time for the experiment, his younger brother obviously didn't want to eat dog food and asked to use high-grade caviar.

Pavlov didn't want to get used to his stink, and said: "Today is still toast, you have no choice!"

The younger brother said: "Then you'd better bake better!"

Pavlov said: "Say a few words less, the experiment is about to start."

Pavlov then shook the bell in his hand.

The younger brother was indifferent.

Pavlov shook it again, and the younger brother wondered, "Where's my toast?"

"Open your mouth," Pavlov said.

The younger brother said: "I don't, I want to see the bread!"

"You open your mouth first, and I will record the secretion of saliva," Pavlov said.

But when he came over with a pen and paper, his younger brother punched him angrily: "Fuck your experiment, you want the results of the experiment without giving me bread?"

Pavlov covered his nose: "How dare you do it."

The younger brother said loudly: "I'm not a dog. Of course I want to beat someone when I get angry!"

Seeing this posture, Li Yu and the others rushed in quickly. Li Yu had also practiced kung fu a few times, and he was from a top martial arts school like Huang Feihong. He couldn't deal with ronin who practiced martial arts. He was still a little sure against ordinary people like this. .

Li Yu grabbed Pavlov's brother's hand and twisted it behind his back. He squatted down in pain.

The students gathered around and asked, "Professor, how are you doing?"

Pavlov said angrily: "Kick him out and never enter my laboratory again!"

Li Yu pushed him out of the gate: "Did you hear that?"

The younger brother rubbed his arms and snorted coldly, "If you don't come, you won't come."

After saying that, he turned his head and left.

Li Yu turned around and asked, "How is Mr. Professor?"

When Pavlov saw Li Yu, he was surprised and said, "It's you." Half of his anger subsided, "Why are you here again?"

Li Yu said with a smile: "Come to visit the professor's experiment. I suddenly found that some people are not as good as dogs."

Pavlov was amused: "You are so right, you are not as good as a dog."

Pavlov was also very helpless. The family didn't understand science, and they insisted on arranging scientific work for his younger brother.

Later, Pavlov's mother justified his brother: "What kind of shit experiment are you doing, you rang the bell but didn't give Nicholas food, you know your brother is like a madman when he is hungry."

It is said that although his younger brother did not stay in the laboratory for a few days, he was still treated as an experimental subject for a few days, but he boasted that Pavlov's achievements were actually his credit.

"He is just my clerk," he even said nonsense to the reporters. "I am the instructor of the whole experiment. When I am drooling carefully, he knows to ring the bell stupidly."

It's also funny enough.

Katz took out a letter and started talking about business: "On behalf of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Karolin Institute, I am here to present the official nominations for next year's Nobel Prize."

Pavlov took the letter: "Nobel Prize, Mr. Lao."

"It's my honor," Katz said.

Pavlov suddenly thought: "Has Li Yu in front of you been nominated?"

Katz said: "I don't know. I am not in charge of the statistics of the Far East. Besides, the news is too slow now. The scholars of the Academy of Sciences don't know much about the academic achievements of the East."

"I think he's well qualified," Pavlov said.

Katz said: "Mr. Li Yu has already received the mathematics award from the king himself, I think it is almost the same."

Li Yu was not in a hurry about this, and he estimated that he would get it in a short time. He said with a smile, "At least the bonus is the same."

Pavlov said: "I really hope to see the day when Mr. Li Yu wins the award again, and let those proud people know the power of the East."

The student suddenly pointed to his nose and said, "Professor, your nosebleed can't stop."

When Pavlov touched it lightly, he felt super painful on the bridge of his nose, "Oops, maybe it's broken! This damned Nikolai is so hard on his brother."

Several people hurriedly said: "Go to the hospital quickly!"

Pavlov said: "I'm kidding, we'll meet another day."

Several students immediately accompanied him to the hospital.

After Pavlov left, Katz flipped through the letter in his hand: "I still have to send a letter to Mr. Tolstoy."

Li Yu said, "Are you going to Moscow?"

Katz said, "Why go to Moscow?"

"Mr. Tolstoy lives in Moscow?" Li Yu said.

"That's true," Katz said, "but he is currently in St. Petersburg, and it's not far away, at the Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts next door."

"Academy of Fine Arts?" Li Yu asked suspiciously, "What is Mr. Tolstoy doing there, learning to paint?"

"That's not it," Katz explained. "Mr. Repin is going to paint another portrait of Mr. Tolstoy."

Well, it turned out to be like this, and I was able to meet the famous painter Repin who criticized reality.

Katz asked again: "Are you going to see it too?"

Before Li Yu returned, Lu Bicheng, who had been silent behind him, said first, "Of course I'm going."

She didn't know great scientists like Mendeleev and Pavlov very well, but Tolstoy's name had long been heard.

Katz said: "Madam said so, presumably Mr. Li Yu will agree."

Lu Bicheng could only continue to explain: "We are just walking together."

Katz is not very old, and said with a smile: "I understand, I understand. Let's go, it's not far anyway."

Li Yu also wanted to see the true face of this leading figure in the Russian literary world; and Repin, who wrote the well-known "Trailer on the Volga".

Tolstoy himself is also a critical realist writer, and Russia's attainments in this field are really high.

But after the Cold War, the struggle between the US and the Soviet Union was no longer limited to armaments. In order to suppress the Russian cultural field, the US crazily promoted surrealism against the realism genre.

Stirring up sky-high prices for all kinds of paintings that ordinary people can't understand at all.

Even in today's art field, it seems that if you don't understand surrealism, you are artistically illiterate.

Hey, Li Yu doesn't know much about art either, so he can only lament whether his aesthetic cognition is really too low. Some things are indeed so artistic that they can't see why.

He can only think so in private, otherwise he will definitely be scolded as artistically illiterate, and he doesn't understand whether the more abstract the more art is.In his cognition, art is diverse, not only European and American surrealism.

Russian critical realism belongs to digging deeper connotations in reality, and ordinary people can at least understand it.

Lu Bicheng was very excited: "I have read reports that Mr. Tolstoy is a first-class writer today."

Li Yu said with a smile: "This evaluation is not excessive at all."

Domestically, the translation of Tolstoy's works started almost a few years ago, but limited by the level of translation, several of Tolstoy's masterpieces have not yet been translated into China.

But after [-], and during the "May [-]th Movement", the translation of Tuo Weng completely ushered in the peak.

At that time, domestic literary leaders, such as Lu Xun and Mao Dun, advocated the reading of Russian works, which led to the popularity of translation and research on Russian famous writers in the literary world.

By the end of the 40s, almost all of Toon's works had been translated into China.

Due to its great influence, after the founding of the People's Republic of China, a large-scale retranslation and reprinting of Toon's three classic masterpieces "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina" and "Resurrection" were carried out again.

Since then, everyone in the country has known the name of Tuo Weng.

Lu Bicheng said: "It's a pity that all I read are fragments, and I haven't been able to see the whole picture."

Li Yu said: "This is easy to handle, just buy more English versions."

Now they are in St. Petersburg, and basically all they can buy are the original Russian editions.

Lu Bicheng was very interested: "It's a pity that I can't read the original Russian version."

Li Yu smiled and said, "Forget it, it's really hard to learn Russian."

Lu Bicheng said: "After I bring it back to China, I will definitely ask Lin Shu from the Institute of Translation and Translation at the Imperial University to translate."

Upon hearing this, Li Yu said, "Don't worry."

What he thought was that it would be better to wait for a while and directly translate it in vernacular Chinese, or the slightly helpless way of thinking: relying on foreigners to respect oneself.Only by letting everyone know that foreigners also use vernacular can they slowly accept it.

Moreover, the translation of Russian works is indeed not an easy task. The key point is that there are too few people in China who understand foreign languages.

Moreover, translation is not an easy task, and it is not only necessary to know Russian.