Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 308 47 The Disappearance of Copenhagen

In fact, Bohr's idea was very simple, that is, if you can't beat them, join them.

At this Como conference, most of the other participating physicists focused their attention and attention on the particle accelerator brought by Chen Muwu, and they were all excited about this new type of experiment that changed the development and research direction of nuclear physics. equipment, they are all thinking about whether they should spend a lot of money to bring one back to their university or laboratory, or whether after returning it, they can use it according to what Chen Muwu's subordinates Zhao Zhongyao and Cockcroft published in the "Annals of Physics" The paper, from the clues to understand the mystery of the particle accelerator, started to imitate one.

Only Bohr, who was not very interested in doing experiments by himself, realized something else.

That is universities in various countries. The physicists who came to Italy this time were basically led by elderly and respected old people. They came with them, and they all had more or less achievements in physics. Middle-aged people and backbones who have achieved some achievements.

Only at the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University, where his teacher Rutherford worked, he simply became a hands-off shopkeeper and returned to New Zealand to take care of himself, taking over the management of the laboratory while he was away from Cambridge, as well as the management of the laboratory. The big issue of Mo's participation in the meeting was all passed on to his junior brother Chen Muwu.

Like Chen Muwu, Bohr also walked step by step in this way.

After receiving the Nobel Prize, the Institute of Theoretical Physics building funded by the Carlsberg Foundation in Copenhagen was completed at the same time. He rose from an ordinary professor to the director of the institute.

Bohr was exactly like Chen Muwu at that time. How could he have any management experience?
The management work within the institute is entirely a matter of him trying to cross the river by feeling the stones.

In the early days of taking over, Bohr made a lot of jokes, big and small.

Dr. Chen is young and has no previous management experience, but he is able to do everything flawlessly, which is much better than he was at the time.

And more importantly, Bohr noticed the group of young people surrounding Chen Muwu.

The reason why he wanted to apply for funds to build the Institute of Theoretical Physics was that he wanted to train some young people who could take over in physics research for his native Denmark.

But later, because Denmark’s population was really small, there were very few young people interested in physics. In addition, Bohr won the Nobel Prize and became a flag planted in Northern Europe, attracting many aspiring people. For young European and American scholars who have made further progress in physics.

So this allowed Bohr to take advantage of the situation and transform this institute, which was originally intended to cultivate talents for his country, into a gathering place for young physics scholars, creating a youth storm for the research of theoretical physics.

Now the problem came again. His Institute of Theoretical Physics was full of young people, and the Cambridge students following Chen Muwu were also young people. The senior brother and junior brother crashed into a car again.

And if we look at the average age, the young people on Chen Muwu's side are younger than those on his side.

It's just that age is never an excuse, and being young doesn't mean that their physics research level is low.

On the contrary, at this Como meeting, the two results that attracted the attention of the majority of participants came from the Cavendish Laboratory, Chen Muwu and his team.

This team is constantly producing new results and is full of youthful energy.

In Bohr's eyes, such a team would definitely attract more young scholars than his Institute of Theoretical Physics in the future.

Let alone the future. Isn’t it obvious enough right now?

One of his favorite assistants is currently the most talented young physicist in Germany, Werner Heisenberg. He has been fascinated by Chen Muwu. Not only did he go to Cambridge University, he will never return. , even three months had passed since he left Cambridge to return home for Christmas and New Year in 1927, and he still refused to return to Copenhagen.

Unlike his senior brother Pauli, he found a professorship at the University of Berlin in the capital and became an unemployed vagrant when he returned to Germany.

Bohr also saw the lecture on quantum field theory given by Heisenberg, Dirac of Cambridge, and von Neumann of the University of Göttingen at the Como Conference. Those three young people Standing on the stage, they worked together very well.

Putting all the above circumstances together, Bohr always felt that it was not optimistic for Heisenberg to return to Copenhagen to do research with him again.

After he returns to Denmark, he will probably start trying to recruit a new assistant, or randomly choose one of the students from the institute to help him write his thesis.

The Institute of Theoretical Physics had only been brilliant for a few years when it was copied by the Cambridge gang headed by his junior brother Chen Muwu. Bohr felt a little uncomfortable.

Of course, Bohr's love for physics was more profound than his personal gains and losses.

He was also vaguely envious of the beautiful atmosphere in which young people from Cambridge University gathered together to study physics. He was also a little curious about how they achieved so many research results. Is it just Chen Muwu alone, or is it because everyone gathered together to brainstorm ideas? , discuss together.

But Bohr could not say that he would abandon the big mess in Copenhagen and return to Cambridge again to join Chen Muwu and the others.

And he didn't want to be left further behind by Chen Muwu, so after thinking about it, Bohr came up with such a way to send the paper by telegraph.

The euphemistic name is that it can make academic exchanges between Copenhagen and Cambridge more convenient, but the real intention is to obtain the first-hand research information around Chen Muwu as soon as possible, barely allowing the physics in these two places to Research is on the same level.

Even Bohr, the central figure of the Copenhagen School, now holds this attitude, which seems to basically declare that the "Copenhagen School" that was famous in the previous life will no longer exist in this life, or will not even be established. It will be established, but it will not appear even if it appears.

But Bohr's true thoughts were not told to Chen Muwu.

Chen Muwu didn't know that Bohr was now filled with pessimistic thoughts about the future of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. He simply thought that his senior brother really wanted to find a way to send the full text of physics papers by telegraph.

However, the pieces of paper that Bohr handed to Chen Muwu were, after all, what he had thought of during the meeting in just a few days. There were still many imperfections and problems that could easily go wrong.

In Chen Muwu's eyes, this can only be regarded as a prototype of TeX. It is far from the very complete and widely used LaTeX of later generations.

"Professor Bohr, your idea is very interesting, but I can see that because of the rush of time, there are still many things in it that are not perfect.

"How about this, give me some time, let me improve this set of paper formula symbol system based on these pieces of paper, and strive to make the telegram more concise when sending, but at the same time more rigorous, so as not to cause possible Errors that can lead to ambiguity can save a lot of time in using telegrams to communicate and revise again because of errors."

Chen Muwu wholeheartedly felt that it would be no problem to create a basic version of LaTeX based on telegraph and Morse code.

There is no need to use LaTeX to format the paper, nor to use tikz to draw pictures on the paper. It is just to temporarily borrow the formula system in it to more conveniently transfer the formulas and symbols in the paper. This workload is not actually considered significant. How big.Moreover, Chen Muwu only provided a decoding system. When sending and receiving telegrams in the future, he would not do it himself at all, but would only need to leave it to the translator at the Cambridgeshire Telegraph Office.

Or simply mobilize his teacher Rutherford to spend money to install a telegraph receiving and sending system in the Cavendish Laboratory.

If Chen Muwu's paper encoding system can be promoted in academic circles around the world, then Cambridge University will definitely become a center for receiving and sending telegrams around the world.

No matter how many translators there were at the Cambridgeshire Telegraph Office, they were likely to be frightened by the huge workload and go on strike or resign, leaving the Cambridgeshire Telegraph Office with no one available.

So it’s time to train some of our own translators in addition to typists.

Obviously there is no need for the Internet. As long as you have an old 21s fax machine like Ben in the 80st century, you can easily transmit your paper in real time. But now you can only use such a primitive method of telegraph, living in the [-]s. The inconvenience of the early part of the century was once again evident.

Just like Chen Muwu didn't know Bohr's true intentions, Bohr didn't know what Chen Muwu was thinking now.

If he is willing to make modifications based on the plan he designed, then let him go.

Anyway, my original purpose was not just to design a symbol system to facilitate communication between physicists around the world. As long as Dr. Chen agreed to this matter, he would also get stuck as soon as possible in the future. If the Wendish Laboratory's new results obtained by graduate students in experimental and theoretical physics are shared with themselves, then Bohr's goal will be finally achieved.

"It's easy to say, it's easy to say, Dr. Chen. It's exactly what you said. Because of the tight time, this symbol system was designed in a hurry. Please feel free to modify it. Then we will try to communicate several times in Copenhagen and Cambridge, and finally If we continue to make improvements during the process, it will undoubtedly become much more convenient for everyone to transfer physics papers and results to each other in the future than it is now."

Before sitting down, Chen Muwu was afraid that Bohr would still accuse him of kidnapping Heisenberg from his hands as he did on the first day they met.

Bohr, on the other hand, was afraid that Chen Muwu would not agree to establish a complete and timely academic communication system between Copenhagen and Cambridge. He was afraid that he would be like the athletes who were trapped in the Olympic Games, and would be further and further left behind by this junior disciple.

Now that nothing the two of them feared has happened, they can finally have their last farewell dinner in peace.

Who wants to say that foreigners don't have the custom of toasting? Chen Muwu really wants to drag these people to today's dinner to take a look.

Because everyone's seats were randomly distributed regardless of country, this resulted in a lot of people walking around with wine glasses in the venue, making themselves familiar in front of the big shots, just like going from Paris to Like on the train in Como.

Bohr's place became the hardest hit area again, and Chen Muwu was naturally not spared.

Many people who were not very familiar with Chen Muwu raised wine glasses in front of him, but were disappointed to be told that they did not know how to drink.

But I don’t know if Dr. Chen is telling the truth, or if he just doesn’t want to interact with him.

Feeling a little impatient at being harassed, Chen Muwu simply stood up and left the meeting, seizing the time to communicate with other physics seniors who would be leaving tomorrow.

However, his main purpose was to persuade everyone to make up their mind to buy a particle accelerator from him quickly, so that he would not return to Cambridge with just an order from the University of Chicago.

Rutherford was looking forward to this meeting, but this was not a military expo, and there were no big business owners wearing white headscarves and waving green paper fluttering here to frantically shop for goods.

I'm afraid that the teacher and his desire to take this opportunity to make a lot of money are doomed to fail. We can only hope that after the physicists return to China, they can persuade the school to allocate funds.

The conversation between Planck and Chen Muwu was still filled with only one thing: asking him if he could reduce the price of the particle accelerator because of their friendship.

However, Lorenz from the Netherlands asked a new question: "Dr. Chen, will you come to the Amsterdam Olympics next year?"

Time really flies by, and in the blink of an eye it’s another four years.

Chen Muwu actually doesn't want to participate in the Olympic Games held in the Netherlands next year.

One is that he is four years older, and compared with 1924, his physical functions and other things have declined.

Second, since he won so many gold medals in the last Olympic Games, he has not continued to engage in swimming training. Everything in the world is similar to learning, and it is like "sailing against the current. If you don't advance, you will retreat."

Other professional athletes whose main occupation is swimming have been training hard for four years, while I am lazy every day. Even if my physical function does not decline, my swimming skills will not decline.

But Chen Muwu's upper limit is right there. He always feels that if he goes to participate in the Olympics again, he will definitely not be able to take advantage as much as last time.

——Unless he continues to use a big killer weapon, which is the so-called diving. He plunges down and appears directly on the other side of the swimming pool.

The most critical point is that Chen Muwu no longer has such a strong desire for things like Olympic gold medals that he has already obtained.

Whether he will compete next year or not depends entirely on his mood at that time, no one can say for sure.

Oh, besides swimming, there is another event he can participate in.

The bicycle with the transmission function modified for Eddington is also a crushing level existence in this era.

The day after the dinner, everyone left Como one after another, or returned to their own countries and schools, or followed others to visit their workplaces.

On the Cambridge University side, Eddington and Kapitsa led the team. Chen Muwu only followed the large team from Como to Milan.

Here he will join Hubble, who has traveled in Europe for several months and visited major observatories, and then they will go south to Rome to visit the Papal State.

(End of this chapter)