Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 321 60 Master of Satire Zhou Shuren

After researching which three physics research results should be nominated to Stockholm for the Nobel Prize in Physics, the next step is how to write a letter to the Nobel Prize review committee for this research.

Although Chadwick came to remind Chen Muwu not to forget to exercise his right to nominate, unfortunately, he, the deputy of the Cavendish Laboratory, did not have this power.

Regarding how to write a nomination letter, Chen Muwu is a "big girl getting on the sedan chair - for the first time", and Chadwick is even more like a young girl who has not even been married yet.

Since the other party couldn't help him, Chen Muwu could only put down what he wanted to do, leave the Cavendish Laboratory, and go find others who had won the award and been nominated to ask about the matter.

In the Cavendish Laboratory, there are many people who are close to Chen Muwu, but most of them are Nobel Prize insulators who have never been nominated or nominated.

Teacher Rutherford is still in New Zealand, so now in the entire laboratory, there is only one person who has won the Nobel Prize and has been nominated for it, and that is the 1922 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Professor Aston.

It was precisely because of an exchange with Aston last year that Chen Muwu came up with the idea of ​​​​nominating him for the Nobel Prize.

It's just that what he originally wanted to nominate was not the Physics Award or the Chemistry Award, but the Literature Award. The person to be nominated was naturally Mr. Lu Xun, who was related to the old Chen family.

For the sake of caution and to show respect for his predecessors, Chen Muwu did not do it rashly at the time. Instead, he first wrote to China to ask for the opinions of the parties involved.

In fact, he received a reply from Lu Xun after the New Year. However, because the New Year was approaching and all kinds of messy things had accumulated in the laboratory, Chen Muwu could only temporarily shelve the nomination matter, so it has been postponed until now. .

Maybe it was just as Chen Muwu imagined when he wrote to Lu Xun. In his reply, Lu Xun still showed some resistance to the foreigner's award, and modestly said that what he wrote was not that good, and maybe it was not that good. There is no ability to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

However, just as the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1927 will definitely deviate from the original historical trajectory, this reply letter written by Mr. Lu Xun to Chen Muwu is also different from the original reply letter.

In fact, in the original time and space, Lu Xun also came into contact with the nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature for the first time this year.

At that time, the person who nominated him was of course not Chen Muwu, but the previously mentioned Sven Hedin, the Swedish "explorer" who was domineering on Chinese soil.

It is a common problem among some of the more educated people in China to like to associate with Westerners and Easterners.

As a Westerner, Sven Hedin was also rarely obsessed with the "research" of Chinese culture and history, so he was naturally sought after by literati.

Because Lu Xun's name became more and more famous, even the "archaeologist" Sven Hedin had heard of his name, and because of his interest, he had a deep understanding of Lu Xun's achievements and influence in literature.

It is not enough to just enjoy the praise of the Chinese without doing something practical, so Sven Hedin thought of nominating Lu Xun as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. It is unclear whether he will win the prize in the end, but in the end he can be regarded as a contribution to Chinese culture. You have played a part in its promotion, right?

So Sven Hedin discussed this matter with Liu Bannong, who wrote "Teach Me How to Miss Her". Liu Bannong did not think deeply, but was happy for Lu Xun to be nominated for the Nobel Prize.

The reason why the name of the Nobel Prize is so famous in China is because of the two winners of the Nobel Prize, Rabindranath Tagore and Einstein, who have visited China.

Educated people may want to know a little bit about the contributions made by these two Nobel Prize winners in their respective fields.

However, among the common people's talk, they have a simple understanding of the Nobel Prize. As long as they can win this prize, they can immediately receive a bonus of 8 yuan from the Kingdom of Sweden.

Sven Hedin found Liu Bannong, and Liu Bannong found Lu Xun’s student Tai Jinnong and asked the student to write a letter asking Mr. Lu Xun for his opinion on his nomination for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Tai Jinnong wrote the letter on September 17th. On the 25th of the same month, Mr. Lu Xun wrote a reply to him shortly after receiving the letter.

In his reply, Lu Xun first thanked Sven Hedin for his kindness to him and China, then changed the subject and declined politely.

He believed that he was "unworthy" of receiving the "Nobel bounty", and neither was Liang Qichao. "To get this money, you have to work hard. There are no writers better than me in the world, they can't get it."

Lu Xun also cited the example of the "Little John" he translated, saying that he would never be able to write such a book, but the author of the original work, F. Wang Aiqin (now translated as Frederick van Eeden), could Didn't get the Nobel Prize.

Lu Xun also said in this reply that he felt that "there is really no one in China who can win the Nobel bounty... If we give special treatment and leniency to yellow-skinned people, it will only increase the vanity of the Chinese people."

Lu Xun may have made an empiricist error in this passage in his mind.

He only went to Japan to study, and did not go to Western Europe and America.

The Westerners Lu Xun met were basically in Beijing and Jihai.

And because of his status in the Chinese literary world, these Westerners who came to China also respected him very much.

That's why Lu Xun felt that the Swedes would award the Nobel Prize in Literature to him out of sympathy for the Chinese.

But in the eyes of Westerners who really live in Europe and America, do they have any sympathy for the Chinese?

In their eyes, they see more disgust and contempt. The image of the Chinese is that of the dirty and messy people in Chinatown, Fu Manchu with a beard and an evil look on his face.

Thanks to a Swedish prince who was interested in Chinese culture and personally traveled across Eurasia to visit China in 1926, Sven Hedin, also from Sweden, was nominated for Lu Xun the following year. The idea of ​​being a candidate for the Nobel Prize.

If it hadn't been for the Swedish Crown Prince's visit to China, no one would have given up the opportunity to get 8 yuan.

Of course, if there is no ironic passage in the letter, it would not be like Mr. Lu Xun's style.

So he added this paragraph to the reply, "If this thing succeeds and I never write again, I'm sorry; if I write again, it may become a Hanlin style and have nothing to look at. I will still be poor and without reputation." For the best."

Mr. Lu Xun was worried that if he won the prize, his writing would become "Hanlin writing".In ancient times, the duty of the Hanlins in the Hanlin Academy was to draft royal documents for the emperor.

The so-called "Hanlin writing" mentioned by Lu Xun here should mean that after winning the award, do you have to write articles according to the preferences of the Nobel Prize in Literature?
Because Lu Xun hated this sanctimonious Swedish "enthusiast of Chinese culture" Sven Hedin, he wrote such a letter to his student Tai Jinnong. Who knew that the prediction was successful?

He refused to accept the award because he was afraid that what he would write in the future would become Western Hanlin texts.

Little did they know that in later generations, these Hanlin texts were the only way to win various literary and film awards from Westerners.

But this time, in this world, because of the existence of Chen Muwu, Lu Xun's attitude changed a lot in his reply to him.

He just said politely that his level was not good enough and he might not be able to catch the eye of the judges. He asked Chen Muwu to do his academic work abroad with peace of mind, make more achievements, win more glory and contribute to the country, and stop doing small things like judging awards for himself. Too much time is wasted on.

——As for the large paragraph at the end of the original reply to Tai Jinnong, it has completely disappeared.

However, when Chen Muwu looked at this letter written with a brush and sent from China, he still felt that he was being ridiculed.

Lu Xun said not to waste time on trivial matters such as awards and so on. What do these things mean?
It's probably not that he went to participate in the Olympics or visited Sulian to give lectures, but that he was pretending to be a ghost and advocating spiritualism and other messy things.

Although the two of them were separated by the entire Eurasian continent, they still saw each other, which made Chen Muwu blush.

He was blushing, but Chen Muwu also noticed that Mr. Lu Xun's tone in the letter had relaxed, so he decided to go against his wishes this time and recommend it to Stockholm together with the three physics results of the Cavendish Laboratory. past.

In his heart, both fame and fortune are very important to Mr. Lu Xun. Although writing books in China is profitable, it is not that profitable. On the one hand, he has to face the publisher's arrears of royalties, and on the other hand, he has to face the problem of private reprinting. The situation where pirated books are rampant.

Although genuine books are in arrears with royalties, they will eventually be paid in full in batches, but all the money earned from reprinted books will go into the pockets of pirated booksellers.

In addition to his unsatisfactory income, Lu Xun also had to support his old mother at home in Beijing. Moreover, when his relatives, friends and students encountered difficulties in life, he would generously lend out his own money.

When the Leftist League was first established, because it was in its infancy and had insufficient funds, Lu Xun often used his royalties as funding for the Leftist League.

For someone like him who spends money "lavishly", no matter how much money he makes, it's not enough.

Although it is not certain whether Lu Xun will win the prize even if he is recommended to the Nobel Prize jury.

But if it comes true, the bonus of more than 8 yuan will greatly improve Mr. Lu Xun’s quality of life in China.

Therefore, Chen Muwu finally attached Lu Xun's nomination for the Literature Prize to his nominations for Zhao Zhongyao and Cockcroft. No matter whether he could succeed or not, he had to give it a try.

Because each person can only nominate one candidate for each award, Chadwick contacted the University of Cambridge and other interested parties in the UK to nominate Appleton and Wilson for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Nominate qualified people to help.

Sending these two letters was not enough. Chen Muwu also needed to find someone to translate Lu Xun's works into English.

He will definitely not do this himself, mainly because he is not good enough and has no experience. He is afraid that he will not be able to translate the charm and essence of it, and all he will get is dross.

Moreover, Chen Muwu's time was not enough to support him in continuing his translation work in addition to his academic research in physics.

So he still followed the plan he had made long ago and wrote to Lao She, who taught Chinese to foreigners at the Oriental College of the University of London, asking him to help translate Lu Xun's works.

Chen Muwu also sent a telegram to Ye Gongchao, who stayed in China to teach, asking him to do the same work if he had time. At the same time, he also looked around the country to see if anyone had started translating Lu Xun's works.

The extra sentence he mentioned at the end of the telegram was not in vain. Lu Xun's "The True Story of Ah Q" had been translated into English for the first time a year ago in 1926. The translator was Liang Sheqian and it was published by the Commercial Press in Jihai. First published.

After receiving Chen Muwu's telegram, Ye Gongchao started the translation work and bought several English translations of "The True Story of Ah Q" from China and sent a few to the UK, which temporarily relieved Chen Muwu's urgent need.

After completing all the above-mentioned things, Chen Muwu finally had time to visit the particle accelerator laboratory that he had built but had not been to for dozens of days.

Completely different from the deserted scene before leaving the Cavendish Laboratory for Como, Italy, the particle accelerator laboratory is now bustling with activity.

Although no one knows how much energy this machine and the technology behind it contain, but with such a new gadget, everyone wants to do a few experiments on it.

So the particle accelerator, or the protons in the proton source in the particle accelerator finally suffered. Every time they are launched from the proton source, after being accelerated by the high-energy electric field, they always have to face various problems. A variety of different targets.

However, these laboratory colleagues who are waiting in line to use the particle accelerator only have to submit the application and the target materials they have prepared.

The specific operations of completing a series of tasks such as bombardment on the particle accelerator can currently only be completed by Zhao Zhongyao.

It wasn't that his crewmate Cockcroft was slacking off, but that he had important other work to do.

In Italy, Compton has already placed an order with the Cavendish Laboratory on behalf of the University of Chicago, and more orders from other universities in the United States are probably on their way across the ocean to the UK.

So since returning to the UK, Cockcroft began to supervise the supervisors every day, and proposed specific improvements to the factory based on the problems encountered during assembly at Cambridge University.

After all, for the Cavendish Laboratory, serving the gods of wealth from the United States is a very important task at the moment.

(End of this chapter)