Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 388 127 It’s time for the Nobel Prize again

With the D-box, the way to generate magnetic fields and alternating electric fields, and now the source of positively charged alpha particles borrowed from Uppsala University, all that remains is to assemble them together. This one works.

Of course, even if the radius of the No. 1 cyclotron is only fifteen centimeters, it must be placed in a vacuum environment.

And because it is an experimental model, its main function is to try whether a cyclotron can be built theoretically, and it will not be used in subsequent precision experiments. Therefore, this cyclotron model is not suitable for vacuum The degree requirements are not high.

Chen Muwu does not need to purchase an advanced vacuum pump with very high vacuum from the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University. Instead, he can use some instruments from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm to obtain materials locally.

While waiting for the glass factory to deliver the glass cover covering the outermost part of the cyclotron, Chen Muwu took time to go to Stockholm City Hall to attend the 1927 Nobel Prize award banquet.

The Far East Education Charity Fund he envisioned failed to materialize at the dinner party.

Sweden is worthy of being one of the representatives of Nordic countries with high welfare. It is not difficult to establish a charitable education fund.

But the difficulty is to go to various departments to report, including but not limited to taxation, education, foreign affairs departments, etc.

Chen Muwu was unfamiliar with the place and he didn't speak Swedish very well, so he certainly couldn't go to these departments to handle the procedures in person.

When he told his idea to the two people he was most familiar with in Sweden, he wanted the Swedish crown prince or little Marcus to send someone to help.

However, both the Swedish Crown Prince and young Marcus expressed doubts about his idea.

Both of them believed that Chen Muwu wanted to run a good education, which was completely understandable.

But they have already prepared sufficient funds for Prince's College, and there is no need for Chen Muwu to set up another Laoshizi Foundation.

Chen Muwu couldn't say it directly. He just wanted to defraud a group of dignitaries, princes and grandsons who attended the Nobel Prize dinner, under the banner of a charity foundation, to defraud a sum of money.

Anyway, he was going to deceive even if he didn't deceive others, so he might as well deceive himself into getting the money. At least he could really spend the money on something serious and useful.

Because he did not win the award himself, for Chen Muwu, this year's Nobel Prize award dinner was a bit boring.

As usual, the dinner was hosted by someone from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Before it started, each of this year's Nobel Prize winners had to come on stage one by one and make a few short speeches.

Without exception, everyone thanked the King of Sweden, the royal family and the ministers from various countries who came to attend the dinner. Anyway, before making a formal speech, they said a long list of words of thanks.

When it came to the physics prize, the three winners all added the name of Chen Muwu who was present.

There is no need to say more about Zhao Zhongyao and Cockcroft, because their particle accelerator was originally an idea proposed by Chen Muwu, and they were the first to use materials that cost less than one pound to build the world's first accelerator. Model of the motor.

The two of them thanked Chen Muwu, which was quite reasonable.

But Wilson, another physics prize winner who came on stage later, also thanked Chen Muwu in his short speech, which surprised Chen Muwu a little.

He didn't know whether Professor Wilson did it deliberately by following the trend of Zhao Zhongyao and Cockcroft, or whether he really wanted to thank himself.

Chen Muwu planned to find an opportunity in the future to express his politeness and gratitude to Professor Wilson in person.

The reason why I didn’t rush over immediately after Wilson’s speech was not because Wilson is a new Nobel Prize winner in physics, and there are many people who want to communicate with him to get acquainted with him.

It was purely because Chen Muwu, who came to attend the Nobel Prize dinner today, was approached by waves of people to talk to, and he couldn't get away from it at all.

He didn't win the award at all. He obviously had a mentality of "don't eat for free" because people in Sweden did not eat for free. As a result, he was even busier than the Nobel Prize winner in the time it took to eat.

The Jiang minister in Sweden, whose surname was Dai Chen Lin and also nicknamed Yunong, had resigned from his post and returned to China a few years ago.

His successor was from the same hometown as the French Minister Chen Lu, and the Belgian Minister Wang Jingqi whom he met in Brussels not long ago. He also came from Zeng Zongjian, who was forced to establish the Marquis of Fujian.

Minister Zeng was a student of Nanyang Public School, and later studied legal economics at the University of Cambridge in England and received a bachelor's degree in economics.

Born in a transportation college and studying at Cambridge University, Zeng Zongjian can be regarded as Chen Muwu's double senior.

He has been serving as deputy minister of foreign affairs in the domestic Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He once negotiated with foreigners about the May 30th Massacre, but failed to achieve the desired results and was criticized for being too weak.

In 1926, Zeng Zongjian was sent to Sweden as a minister because of his unfavorable performance.

But before he could set out, Foreign Minister Shen Ruilin took the blame in the "Dagukou Incident" and resigned.

Zeng Zongjian had to act as the deputy minister of foreign affairs and negotiated with the ministers of the eight signatories of the "Xin Chou Treaty", but in the end he did not achieve any good results.

The "Dagukou Incident" forced the Duan government to collapse, and Zeng Zongjian was finally able to break away from the humiliating status of deputy foreign minister.

He then took up his duties in 1926, replacing the departing former Minister Dai Chenlin, and went to Stockholm as the Republic of China's Minister to Sweden.

But when Chen Muwu came to Sweden this time, he was unable to meet his senior.

The reason is that after Zeng Zongjian took office, he realized that what he inherited was a mess.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been in arrears with funding for several years, leading to a large exodus of office staff in the embassy.

Zeng Zongjian is not a man who bakes steamed buns, so naturally he will not get sufficient diplomatic funds from baked steamed buns to support the continued operation of embassies abroad like Wang Jingqi of Belgium.

He arrived in Sweden in the middle of 1926. At the turn of the spring and summer of 1927, he joined the "Salary Request Group of the Republic of China's Ministers Abroad" and resigned from their respective posts. He returned to the country and jointly submitted complaints to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Beiyang. The government is putting pressure on them to quickly settle the funds they owe to embassies and consulates abroad in recent years. Otherwise, they will refuse to return to their posts to perform their duties.

This situation is much bigger than when Lu Xun, who was the minister of the Ministry of Education, went to the gate of the Ministry of Education and put up a "Quit" sign.

The leader of this high-level salary-demand group is an old acquaintance of Chen Muwu. After he met in Rome at the beginning of this year with Zhu Zhaoxin, the minister stationed in Italy, the other party began to connect with each other, and finally returned to the country with a large group of ministers stationed in Europe.

Most of these ministers, as they put forward to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will never return to their bases unless funds and salaries are paid.

They waited for several years until the Beiyang government fell and the Jingjing government took over.

Compared with the old people in the north who have been working on the diplomatic front even since the Qing Dynasty, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Tingjing government is more inclined to use new people.

Except for a small number of these ministers who returned to their countries to seek salary, after being selected and retained by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing to serve as envoys to other countries, most of them were granted empty positions as consultants to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and lived in the diplomatic system with pitifully small salaries.

Chen Mu, the minister to France, was a veteran figure in the diplomatic system of the Republic of China. In his later years, he betrayed himself and became a traitor. This was partly because he could not accept the sudden change in status from a powerful figure in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to an unknown advisor. psychological gap.

After Zeng Zongjian left, the personnel changes in the Republic of China's embassy in Sweden were not over yet.

According to the relevant regulations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, when the minister is absent from his post for some reason, the counselor or first secretary with the highest diplomatic rank in the embassy should serve as the charge d'affaires in that country.

For example, Zhu Zhaoxin, first secretary who served as charge d'affaires in the UK for several years, and Zeng Zongjian, who was appointed minister to Sweden, stayed in China to handle foreign affairs because of his status as deputy foreign minister, acting as charge d'affaires in Sweden. Gong Anqing, the first secretary with the rank of counselor in the embassy.

Soon after Zeng Zongjian took office, the latter moved across the Atlantic to the United States to serve as Consul General in San Francisco.

They are also embassies and consulates stationed abroad, but the situation in the United States is completely different from that in Europe.

Europe is basically the home base of white people in a broad sense. Counting from their ancestors, they have lived on this land for a thousand or two thousand years.

Therefore, these European countries are more or less hostile to the Chinese, or yellow people, and strictly control the number of foreign populations in their countries.

The situation in the United States is different. The native people in this land are Indians. Later, eight out of ten people were hunted and killed by those who sailed across the ocean to the New World on the Mayflower and their descendants. Nine.

There are basically no indigenous people in the United States now, and it has completely become a country of immigrants.

Although white people still make up the majority, black people and other ethnic minorities are lower-class citizens, including Chinese Americans who have actively or passively immigrated to this land over the past few decades.

The status of the Chinese in the United States is not high, but there is one thing about their character that is very popular, that is, while enduring hardships and hard work, they also stick together and do not mingle with the outside world, but live on their own side. Small world.

So in the United States, a city with a relatively large number of Chinese people, everyone gathers together in gathering areas.

Because gold mines were once discovered, San Francisco happens to be a city with a relatively large number of Chinese in the United States.

Even if the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Beiyang government cannot provide funds for the American embassy and consulates, officials like Gong Anqing from his hometown can still live a comfortable and nourishing life with the help of American folks.

Therefore, Gong Anqing was a blessing in disguise with the arrival of the new minister. He resigned from his position as charge d'affaires and went to the United States to become a consul general with no worries about food and clothing. Naturally, he would not join the "minister's salary request group" in Europe.

Zeng Zongjian returned to China with the delegation, and the affairs of the Swedish Embassy were handed over to a first-class secretary in the Embassy.

However, it didn't take long for the first secretary to resign angrily because he couldn't stand the difficult situation of such a clever woman in the legation, and sealed the job with a seal of gold, well, no gold.

Until now, when Zhao Zhongyao and Chen Muwu came to Sweden, the person responsible for making the embassy operate at a minimum was Lei Bingyang, a third secretary in the embassy.

In this era when there are generally no ambassadors in international diplomatic relations, the minister is the highest envoy sent by one country to another country.

Below the minister are the counselors, and below the counselors are the first secretary, the second secretary, and then the third secretary.

This was basically the lowest level among the diplomatic ranks in the Republic of China. There was only one attaché below, which was a lower position than the third secretary.

Coming to the dinner today, the third secretary of the Swedish Embassy, ​​Lei Bingyang, came to attend the dinner on behalf of Zhao Zhongyao, one of the awardees.

This may be his first time attending an event of this magnitude, and his whole body showed a sense of restraint that was visible to the naked eye.

The neat, clean but cheap clothes Lei Bingyang wore could be regarded as his last dignity as an envoy of a country.

Sitting next to Lei Bingyang was the British Minister to Sweden, Sir Arthur Grant Duff.

Sir Duff, who came to attend the dinner party today, can be said to be in high spirits on happy occasions.

Because of Einstein and the many stars of physicists, the twentieth century can well be called the "Century of Physics", especially in the first thirty years of this century.

Correspondingly, physics has become the most famous among the disciplines awarded the Nobel Prize because a series of world-famous physicists such as Planck, Einstein, Bohr and Chen Muwu have won the prize. .

Among the three physicists who won the Physics Prize this year, two are British. Although the remaining Zhao Zhongyao is not British by nationality, he was also educated and cultivated at the University of Cambridge, the highest institution of higher learning in the United Kingdom. .

The three winners, one old and two new, all came from the Cavendish Laboratory, making Sir Duff's face radiant.

This shows that the British education industry is very solid and stable and can continuously cultivate talents.

He proudly turned his attention to the ministers from other countries who came to attend the dinner today: a German doctor studied bile and won the chemistry prize, an Austrian doctor studied psychiatry and won the physiology or medicine prize, and a French philosopher won the literature prize.

The gold content of these people's awards is definitely not as solid as their British physics award, but they are all powerful countries in Europe and have a strong academic research atmosphere, so they deserve to win the award.

What Duff despised the most was the upstart country bumpkin over there who was well-dressed but always made mistakes in etiquette, the American Minister, Leland Harrison.

He put a lot of oil on his hair, and he was running around socializing in various ways.

But in their country, has any Nobel Prize winner ever spoken on stage today?

whispering sound!

(End of this chapter)