Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 290 29 Shell: Don’t get involved
U.S. President Coolidge put forward a point in a speech this year: "National hegemony is likely to be determined by the oil and petroleum products it possesses."

From the time Coolidge said these words, the United States has been greedily seeking and possessing foreign oil resources, and has been guiding this country into the 21st century.

Chen Muwu doesn't want to be an oil tycoon, he just wants to get a share of the upcoming oil boom.

However, his path to making money from oil was not smooth, at least at first.

After raising the question at a meeting of the Cambridge Apostolic Society and asking which member's family had a background in an oil company, Chen Muwu did not get a satisfactory answer.

He originally thought that the American brother who first brought up Wegener's ridicule at the American Society of Petroleum Geology must have some oil background in his family, and it was not the three companies in New Jersey, New York and California under the Rockefeller family. Standard Oil, Texas Energy, Gulf Oil, etc.

Among the Seven Sisters of Petroleum, American companies alone account for five.

Although he is unwilling to go to the United States, Chen Muwu does not object to dealing with American companies.

Make money, not shabby!
And the more important point is that as early as when the school was built, Marcus Wallenberg Jr., who came to the UK to discuss matters with Chen Muwu, once told him that the Rockefeller Foundation intended to provide $[-] to help build Stockholm. That Prince's College.

At the beginning, Chen Muwu was afraid that the foundation would intervene and interfere with his control of the general direction of the school, so he did not agree to the matter.

But even if the deal wasn't righteous, Rockefeller had already made secret glances at him, so there's nothing wrong with the two of them making money together, right?

You Rockefeller have a mouthful of meat to eat, and you will be satisfied with a mouthful of soup for me.

What was disappointing was that the family of the member of the Apostolic Society who spoke had nothing to do with the oil companies in the United States.

His father was a professor of geology at a university and joined the Petroleum Geology Society, so he could attend the meeting.

It's right to think about it. If this American comes from a nouveau riche family, then most of the universities he wants to attend are private schools that can be attended by money. The best one is of course Harvard University.

If it weren't for his true love for academics, few young men would be like Oppenheimer, who would choose to give up his life in the United States and instead go across the ocean to continue his studies at a top university in the UK.

Only families with academic backgrounds will choose to send their children to study in Europe, the world's academic center.

Even if we can't get in touch with the United States, Europe still has the remaining two oil sisters.

Of these two oil companies, one and a half are British.

Anglo-Persian Petroleum Company, the predecessor of BP, is still only a subsidiary of Myanmar Petroleum Company.

The reason was that William Knox Darcy, the London millionaire who founded the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, spent a lot of his wealth in order to find oil in Persia, causing his assets to shrink severely.

As a last resort, he could only sell most of his company shares to the British Myanmar Petroleum Company and become a subsidiary.

In addition to Anglo-Persian Petroleum Company, 40.00% of Royal Dutch Shell's shares are also owned by the British.

The remaining 60.00% naturally belongs to the Netherlands. This company started by developing oil resources in the Dutch East Indies, that is, Indonesia.

These two oil companies are leaders in the European industry and can barely compete with the oil giants in the United States.

Not only were the Americans unable to give the answer Chen Muwu wanted, but no one else in the Apostolic Society present could answer the question he asked.

We are all children of nobles, and our families are not short of money at all.

Those who run oil companies are all nouveau riche, or they are bumpkins from overseas colonies. They are completely different from them.

They didn't know why the Chinese aristocrat Chen Muwu, who had always seemed gentle and elegant, and whose title was equivalent to the Duke, the highest level in the British aristocratic system, suddenly wanted to study oil exploration and do those menial jobs.

After asking for a long time, no one could find a relationship with Anglo-Persian Oil Company and its parent company Myanmar Petroleum Company. Only one person reluctantly gave Chen Muwu a positive answer.

He said that he could help and see if he could contact the staff of the Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company. This company is the British subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell and is responsible for guiding the storage and transportation of oil.

As nobles of the British Empire, the family backgrounds of these members of the Apostolic Society are all unfathomable.

A few days later, positive news came from the member of the Apostolic Society, saying that the other party agreed to meet Chen Muwu.

Xiao Chen went to London from Cambridge with great interest, but then he was rejected.

After the oil boom started, many people came to oil companies every day, saying that they had good ideas for finding oil, or that they had a location that would definitely produce oil, and asked the company for a consulting fee, or made a request for partnership, waiting for the oil well After the oil is produced, a certain proportion of dividends must be paid.

At Angsa Petroleum Company, we can meet such people from time to time.

But this was the first time that a great scientist like Chen Muwu came to visit him in person.

Everyone is no longer surprised that scientists cross industries to engage in industry.

After all, technology is a combination of science and technology, and only by walking on two legs can we move forward.

It’s just that no one can say what the success rate of scientists changing careers will be in the end.

Even Einstein, besides being a well-known physicist, who would have thought that he also had a patent for the invention of an absorption refrigerator?

However, this refrigerator model did not become mainstream until 100 years later, and it was not even mass-produced, so his patent was not very famous.

The relevant person in charge of Angsa Petroleum Company originally thought that Chen Muwu, as a Cambridge veteran, would have a high opinion when he came to the company and faced the senior executives.

Unexpectedly, he talked for a long time and only proposed using continental drift to search for oil within the scope of the earth.

It has been more than ten years since Taylor and Wegener's theory of continental drift was proposed.

Moreover, Angsa Company also has expatriate employees in the United States, so they will naturally receive the minutes of the Petroleum Geology Society meeting.

The whimsical hypothesis that was unanimously rejected by all the participating experts was actually supported by Chen Muwu, and the people who received him were surprised.

Conan Doyle, who has a high status in the British popular novel world, even if he supports spiritualism full of feudal superstition, it will not cover up his brilliance.

Chen Muwu can also be regarded as a representative figure in British physics. Even if he supports the fallacy theory, it is difficult for employees of Ansa Company to refute his face directly.

In the face of Chen Muwu’s request that the continental drift hypothesis could be used to calculate mineral deposits containing large amounts of oil, he hoped that Royal Dutch Shell, the parent company of Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company, could try exploration and drilling. The other party did not deny it directly, but could only use the method of drilling. Send a report to the headquarters to see if you can get an agreed answer before making a decision. This reason was fooled.

Chen Muwu knew that this was just a euphemism to reject the offer, so he no longer had much hope for cooperation with Royal Dutch Shell.

A few days later, Chen Muwu, who returned to Cambridge University, was informed by Oppenheimer that he had read news about his relationship with Shell from the newspaper.

Chen Muwu never expected that things would develop in such a strange way, so he quickly asked for the newspaper from Oppenheimer.

It seems that Angsa Petroleum Company really did not use polite words to fool Chen Muwu, but actually told his superior parent company, Royal Dutch Shell, about his idea of ​​​​exploiting oil.The person speaking in the newspaper this time was Henry Deterding, the managing director of Shell.

He even criticized Chen Muwu by name, to the effect that physicists should study physics well and don't think that they have succeeded in all aspects and just think about extending their hands to oil exploration. Don't use your hobbies to do it. Challenge my profession.

He said this to a Dutch newspaper reporter during an interview, and the full text was reprinted in The Times. Therefore, Oppenheimer was able to read the news in the newspaper that Deterding angrily criticized Chen Muwu, and behaved even more than the latter. Angry.

"Dr. Chen, what exactly is this Deterding? It's just an academic discussion, why did he go so far?"

Looking at Oppenheimer's expression, Chen Muwu felt that this man even had murderous intentions.

As long as he nodded slightly, maybe Robert would go to the Netherlands and kill the general manager of Shell Company for Nai.

But what's puzzling is that he doesn't even know this Deterding. Deterding should have only seen himself in the newspaper.

The two of them should have had no grievances before, but why did the other party have so much malice towards him?
Do you want to scold him back?
Forget it, not worth it.

Since Shell is willing to abandon the large oil fields that come to their doorstep and throw them away like garbage, Chen Muwu doesn't really want to feel sorry for them.

He would also like to thank Deterding for placing an advertisement for him in the newspaper. After this news is released, other oil companies should contact him, right?
Anyway, the cost of drilling a well is a drop in the bucket compared to the high profits of oil companies. If you don't produce oil, you won't lose much money. If you do, it will be a huge profit.

Unfortunately, the Cavendish Laboratory is not the Xunyang Building, and Chen Muwu does not have the Four Treasures of the Study.

Otherwise, he would write a poem on the wall. If he were to hit oil in his youth, he would dare to laugh at Shell for being such a waste!

However, Deterding's speech in the newspaper was not directed only at Chen Muwu.

Wegener, who still insists on the continental drift hypothesis, has also become the target of Deterding's attack. This "absurd" theory he proposed will inevitably become the object of ridicule again.

Chen Muwu is not Director Wang, and he cannot do the kind of thing like "I won't kill Boren, Boren will die because of me."

Since one of his actions had pushed the stranger Wegener to the forefront, he simply found Crowther, the Manchester Guardian's resident reporter at the Cavendish Laboratory, and expressed his intentions to the latter. View.

"I think the continental drift hypothesis proposed by Taylor and Wegener should be the theory closest to the cause of the distribution of the earth's continents. However, I neither agree with Mr. Taylor's tidal gravity theory nor Mr. Wegener's centrifugal force theory. . Perhaps there is another force in the earth driving the drift of the continents, but due to our current level of scientific development, we cannot yet explain where this force comes from."

Chen Muwu's words to Crowther express his support for the continental drift hypothesis throughout the article.

But he didn't bring up any useful points. He just said a lot of nonsense like "I know there is a force driving it, but I don't know what that force is."

Chen Muwu used his academic reputation to vouch for Wegener, and now the two of them were on the same front.

Perhaps now, Chen Muwu may be ridiculed, saying that Chen Muwu, a layman, should not have anything to do with geology.

There was no good solution, he could only endure the humiliation and bear the burden.

After he "discovers" the physical phenomenon of nuclear fission, it will be his day of transformation.

Expressing support in newspapers was not enough. Chen Muwu also thought of writing a letter to Wegener in person to express his encouragement and support.

But he didn't know Wegener's mailing address, so he could only ask others.

Wegener was a German, a graduate of the University of Berlin, and studied physics with Planck.

So Chen Muwu sent the letter to the Department of Physics of the University of Berlin. After Planck retired, he still had a few acquaintances there.

However, it was inappropriate to ask the respected and busy Einstein to do this for him. The recipient Chen Muwu wrote on the envelope was Pauli.

Even though they had a quarrel and although they didn't deal with each other, it was just a small matter like asking for a mailing address. Pauli couldn't help but help, right?
Chen Muwu took Pauli's place, and he felt that he would definitely receive a reply from Berlin soon.

The letter must have included Wegener's mailing address, and it must have been appended to Pauli's ridicule of him throughout the text.

Chen Muwu especially believed that Pauli would [-]% laugh at him for supporting a ridiculous geological theory without knowing why.

It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, whoever laughs at the end really wins.

Ever since he sent the letter to Berlin, Chen Muwu has been waiting eagerly for the arrival of the postman at Trinity College.

One day later, the postman actually delivered a letter to Chen Muwu, which made him feel that the round-trip time from Cambridge to London was too fast.

After reading the information on the envelope, he discovered that the letter was not sent from Berlin, but from Leiden in the Netherlands.

After being scolded by Deterding in the newspaper, Chen Muwu had not thought about finding a Dutchman to find out what was going on.

But he had no acquaintances in the Netherlands. Professor Onnes, the old director of the Low Temperature Physics Laboratory of Leiden University, passed away this year. Although Kitham had met him once, it was only a casual acquaintance.

As for Ehrenfest, although he stayed at his house when he went to Leiden, Ehrenfest at that time had been persuading Chen Muwu to "admit his mistakes" to Einstein and let them reconcile as master and apprentice.

Chen Muwu was very tired of this kind of Tang Monk-style preaching, and the two of them didn't have much academic exchanges, so they didn't usually have much contact.

It would be too presumptuous to ask rashly.

Chen Muwu didn't take Deterding's criticism seriously anyway, so he had no intention of delving into the matter.

However, Chen Muwu forgot that he had a "good brother" at Leiden University. He spent the whole day longing for the fact that he could achieve results in physics like Chen Muwu and become the "Light of East Asia" or "The Light of Japan". Yoshio Nishina.

He was the one who wrote to Chen Muwu. Yoshio Nishina introduced in detail why Deterding scolded Chen Muwu.

Because Shell's oil fields and oil production and refining facilities in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, were all nationalized after the establishment of Sulian, the company and Deterdin personally suffered great losses.

Therefore, this person became extremely anti-Soviet. He would oppose anything that the Soviet Union supported or supported the Soviet Union.

Chen Muwu, a strike sympathizer, a foreign academician of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and a lecturer in Lezhigrad, was a friend of the Soviet Union in Deterdin's eyes.

If a person like this wants to cooperate with Shell, Deterding must be unwilling to do so.

At the end of the letter, Yoshio Nishina pretended to casually ask Chen Muwu a question, asking whether his method of using the continental drift theory for oil exploration mentioned by Deterding in the interview was really effective.If it is valid, can you tell us whether there are any large oil fields in the surrounding area?If so, where are they located?
　The review standards have been relaxed recently, so there are great authors writing works on this subject.

　　I know who the author is, and he is indeed a big shot who can achieve the level of Twelve Heavenly Kings this year, but I can’t say.

　　If you are interested, you can click to take a look.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)