Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 10 Chapter 10

After listening to Eddington's complaints, Thomson took Chen Muwu's paper and read it carefully, and he really became very interested.

He said to Eddington: "Since the "Philosophical Journal" does not want it, then we will publish it in the "Proceedings of the Royal Society of Natural Sciences."

That's right, the dean of Trinity College in front of him has another identity, that is, No. 40, the second president of the Royal Society.

Although he has left, Thomson's status in the Royal Society is still very high.Thomson went on to Eddington: "Tonight I can write a letter of recommendation and send it to the Royal Society.

"However, I would like to show Ernest the paper first, and perhaps he will also be interested in it.

"Ask him to find someone to design an experiment to test whether this new theory is right or wrong. It would be great if the results of the experiment can be published in the next issue of Journal of Natural Sciences at the same time as the paper."

When the name Ernest is mentioned, the general public's first reaction should be the tough guy Ernest Hemingway, the author of the text "The Old Man and the Sea" they learned in elementary school textbooks.

The first reaction of Douban youths moaning without illness is Ernest Dawson, a niche British poet who is good at pretending.

For Chen Muwu, Ph.D. in nuclear physics, this name represents the ancestor of their profession.

After receiving the invitation to be the dean of Trinity College, Thomson not only immediately resigned as the president of the Royal Society, but also announced that he would no longer serve as the director of the Cavendish Laboratory.

For the successor of the post of laboratory director, Thomson selected his own students, who were praised by "Encyclopedia Britannica" as "the world's greatest experimental physicist after Faraday", the winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1908, Ernes Te Rutherford.

Early the next morning, Rutherford received the paper delivered by Eddington himself.

Rutherford and Eddington are both graduates of Trinity College and Cavendish Department, so they are very close.

The latter conveyed to the former the entrustment of their common mentor Thomson, asking him to study this paper carefully. If he is interested, it is best to design an experiment for verification. The "Proceedings of Natural Science" of the Royal Society has provided him The experimental results of the reserved layout.

In order to attract Rutherford's attention, Eddington also mentioned his idol who was also a teacher and a friend, saying that the author of this paper was an unborn genius discovered by Einstein when he was giving lectures in the East.

Unlike Eddington, Rutherford still maintains the look of an old-fashioned physicist, advocating that "physics is an experimental science."

He also once said a famous saying: "A thorough experiment is worth all the theories in this world, even if this theory belongs to Bohr."

Bohr, who won the Nobel Prize with Einstein late last year, is one of Rutherford's most famous students.

Paying attention to experiments does not mean that he despises theory. After sending Eddington away, Rutherford returned to his office with the paper.

Eddington's words aroused Rutherford's curiosity, and he also wanted to see how many people could be favored by Einstein, a popular colleague.

As soon as I read the beginning, Rutherford suddenly felt a kind of emotion in the middle of the night dreaming about youth.

After graduating from Cavendish Laboratory, Rutherford planned to stay in Cambridge to seek a teaching position, but he was sent by his teacher Thomson to McGill University in Montreal on the other side of the Atlantic.

The reason why it is called distribution is that at the end of the 20th century more than [-] years ago, Europe's academic center status was even more unshakable. The United States was already regarded as a low-level cousin. Compared with the United States, Canada was even more low-level.

Now, more than 20 years later, Rutherford is still brooding over this matter, and always believes that the xenophobia of Cavendish Laboratory caused him to bully him as a foreigner, which hindered him from getting a teaching position in Cambridge.

However, at McGill University, Rutherford was a blessing in disguise. He gathered a group of energetic collaborators and students, and carried out a lot of creative scientific research.

The names mentioned by Chen Muwu at the beginning of the thesis, Arthur Eve, David Florence and Joseph Gray, were all Rutherford's partners during his time across the ocean.

He also has a more or less understanding of the research of these people, including the scattering of gamma rays.

From the discovery of the softening phenomenon of gamma rays after scattering by Ive in 1904, to 1913 when Gray redo the experiment and get accurate results, although Rutherford left Canada to teach at the University of Manchester, he has been paying attention to this The experiment, and the communication between McGill University has never been interrupted.

The experimental facts are clearly placed in front of the physicists, but the correct explanation cannot be found.

This Chinese paper sent by Eddington actually gave a theoretical explanation for this unsolved case in physics?
Rutherford couldn't wait to continue reading.

The thesis is not long, and the theoretical knowledge is not complicated.

Although Chen Muwu also considered the relativistic effect, the relativistic effect of low-energy free electrons is not obvious and can be completely ignored.

After reading the end of the thesis, Rutherford was a little moved.

The reason is not that the Chinese person attached the experiment he designed at the end for the convenience of readers' reference.

Instead, Chen Muwu bluntly said that China has no experimental conditions, so he can only ask physicists from all over the world to help verify this.

This made Rutherford feel a little bit sad, because he also felt poverty when he was young.

Rutherford was born in New Zealand. He has many brothers and sisters. His father is a worker and his mother is an elementary school teacher. It is not easy to support a large family with a meager salary, and it is impossible for every child to go to school.

Rutherford's life trajectory should have been to become a New Zealand farmer, but a scholarship received at the age of 24 changed his destiny.

It is said that when he heard the news, Rutherford was digging potatoes in the field. He threw the shovel in his hand to the ground happily and shouted loudly: "This is the last potato I dug in this life!"

From the news in the newspaper, Rutherford knew that China was a poor country.

From this paper sent across the ocean, and from this Chinese person, he saw his own shadow.

He has no reason not to help this troubled but sensitive and studious young man.

Rutherford walked out of his office with the paper and found his student and assistant Chadwick: "James, I need you to pack up an empty room as soon as possible, we have a new experiment to do."

"Yes, Director!"

　There are some things recently that may last for a few days, please include more.

　　This time the detailed outline has written tens of thousands of words, and it will never be that kind of thing.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)