Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 394 133 Griffith’s Experiment

After the Lunar New Year in 1928, the guests who came to London from Cambridge University to spend the New Year with Chen Muwu returned to the school one after another.

Chen Muwu did not return to Cambridge with everyone, nor did he immediately rush to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, to continue his work of building a membership accelerator. Instead, he remained at home in London.

The reason why he did this was that before leaving Stockholm, he had already drawn the drawings of each part of the cyclotron, and now they have been handed over to the British factory.

When the factory has finished processing all these parts, Chen Muwu will transport them back to Sweden to assemble the first cyclotron in human history.

The reason why he did not choose a local factory in Stockholm but brought the drawings back to the UK was because when he was at Cambridge University, the Cavendish Laboratory had always had a cooperative relationship with this factory, and the factory had accumulated a lot of experience. Chen Muwu has more trust in the quality of the parts they produce.

Instead of finding a new factory in Sweden with no clue what's going on, it would be better to put in a little more effort to make sure that the cyclotron, which cost a lot of money, is in trouble.

Chen Muwu estimates that it may take one, two or even three months for the factory to process the large number of parts he ordered.

When will the factory send a telegram to inform him that the parts have been produced?

At that time, it was not too late for Chen Muwu to leave the UK and return to Sweden.

What they had discussed in advance was to have the factory transport these parts to Norwich in northeastern England. Zhao Zhongyao and Cockcroft would escort these parts onto the ship in Norwich and take them to Stockholm by sea.

The advantage of this is that you don’t need to switch modes of transportation frequently, and you don’t need to constantly change trains heading north at train stations in major European cities.

Of course, Chen Muwu still chose to take my car overland. He was still frightened by the frightening night on the Beihai ship.

While waiting for the telegram from the factory, Zhao Zhongyao also returned to Cambridge University with the large army.

Although he is the new winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics, he is also a student at the Cavendish Laboratory of Cambridge University.

Because in last year's graduation season, he and Cockcroft were sent to Europe and the United States respectively by Chen Muwu to install Cambridge University's latest particle accelerators for universities and laboratories that had placed orders, which delayed the defense of their doctoral thesis that year. Meeting.

So after Zhao Zhongyao and Cockcroft won the Nobel Prize in Physics this time, they returned to Cavendi to the laboratory and attended a celebration specially held for them with Professor Wilson. On the one hand, on the other hand They also need to attend a doctoral defense ceremony belonging to the two of them, so that they can get a doctoral diploma from Cambridge University and put the doctorate hat firmly on their heads.

Because it is a special matter, I estimate that this defense meeting should be passed very easily. It is most likely just a formality.

Whether it is the University of Cambridge or the Cavendish Laboratory, it is certainly impossible to do the kind of thing where others have won the Nobel Prize in Physics but failed to defend their doctoral thesis.

If this joke really comes out, then not to mention the Cavendish Laboratory and the University of Cambridge, it is estimated that the entire UK will become the object of ridicule by people all over the world.

As the advisor of Zhao Zhongyao and Cockcroft and the general person in charge of the particle accelerator project, Chen Muwu has no plans to return to Cambridge to participate in their doctoral thesis defense.

This is not because Chen Muwu did not win the Nobel Prize in Physics this time. There was a rift between the three people.

Instead, Chen Muwu had to take advantage of the few months the factory was making parts to make preparations for the wedding.

Last year he traveled around every day, either at Cambridge University or in Sweden.

Because of this matter, Chen Muwu has been complained by Mrs. Chen for a long time. How can anyone get married soon and not be prepared at all?

The news that Chen Muwu lives in London is not a big secret to British newspapers.

Whether it is a major newspaper or a tabloid, in order to attract others to buy, they will always set up a lot of pages in each issue of the newspaper so that more content and advertisements can be stuffed in, so that readers can spend money. See more news, giving them value for money.

Reporters also like to inquire about the privacy of these celebrities. As the most famous Chinese in Cambridge University and even the entire UK, Chen Muwu was certainly classified as a celebrity by newspapers.

Every day at Chen Muwu's home in London, he receives many visitors.

People I know, people I don’t know, people I’ve heard of, people I haven’t heard of…

If every visiting guest was introduced into his home and talked with them, Chen Muwu would basically have no time left to do other things every day.

So he still followed the old path and repeated the same routine after he suddenly became famous in Yanhai.

Let the family members who are waiting at the door insist that they are not at home, and they must find out the name of the visitor. Let Chen Muwu judge for himself whether he wants to see the person or not, and then choose whether to come out to meet the visitor or continue to "hide in the small building to become a unified person". ” and turned a blind eye to this.

Among the guests who come to visit every day, at least eight or nine out of ten are yellow people with black hair and black eyes, and basically all of them are Chinese.

Everyone comes to visit Chen Muwu for various reasons:

Some people simply want to meet Chen Muwu as a way to talk with others after returning to China. It would be better if they could take a photo together;

Some people think that Chen Muwu is a teacher at the highest school in the UK, won an Olympic gold medal, and won a Nobel Prize in Physics worth 80,000 yuan, and he can still live in such a luxurious house in the center of London. house, then he must be extremely rich.

If it were in China, in Jihai, even in the concession with the best public security environment, even if Chen Muwu's reputation and family background were well protected, he would inevitably be targeted by people with ulterior motives, and then be blackmailed, or even It's kidnapping.

But in London, England, although everyone respects Chen Muwu, they still don't think highly of yellow people. They can only restrain themselves a little. No one wants to be targeted by the Scotland Yard police and then be arrested and imprisoned. Prison food.

Kidnapping should never happen, and there is no good reason for extortion or extortion in a foreign country, so these people with ulterior motives chose the most straightforward way to ask for money:

borrow.

Each of them is well-dressed, and their clothes are very elegant in style and fabric. They are well-informed and talk well.

Basically, without exception, the persona they set for themselves is either an international student in the UK who has encountered some changes at home and can no longer provide them with high tuition fees and living expenses;

Either he said that his business failed and he lost everything in the UK. Not to mention the working capital back home, he didn't even have money for the day's meals. They all hope that Chen Muwu can provide some relief for the sake of being Chinese.

This extremely low-grade deception actually almost made the Chen family fall for it once.

One day Chen Muwu went out to look for papers in the library of the Royal Society. Chen Muqiao and Chen Muping also had their own affairs and happened to be away from home.

Except for a few servants, the only one left in the house is the old lady who is the master of the house.

Fortunately, the kind-hearted Mrs. Chen had been impressed by the performance of the liar in front of her who was full of snot and tears, crying like pear blossoms, and sincere and sincere. When she was about to pay, Chen Muwu hurried back home. Finally stopped things from getting worse.

It wasn't that he felt sorry for the money that his mother might be defrauded of, but it would be a bit embarrassing if this happened.

From then on, Chen Muqiao went to the Chinese Legation on Portland Street. Relying on the friendship between his brother and the staff of the legation, he asked for a copy of the Chinese students and businessmen studying abroad and doing business in London and surrounding areas. roster to prevent something like this from happening again.

It's not like Chen Muwu didn't meet anyone, and he didn't borrow a penny.

Through the introduction of some close friends, Chen Muwu made some new and old friends.

For example, in the UK, he met Zhu Guangqian, who was a teacher at Chunhui Middle School by Baima Lake in his hometown of Qiyu and had a relationship with Chen Muwu.

The latter is now an international student at the University of Edinburgh. He is about to obtain a degree in the UK, so during the winter vacation, he went to the European continent across the English Channel to investigate and see if there are any good schools there where he can continue his studies. .

It seems that these liberal arts students feel that France is the center of European liberal arts compared to the UK.

The previous Ye Gongchao also studied in France for several years after receiving his master's degree from Cambridge University.

When Zhu Guangqian returned to Edinburgh, he passed through London and learned that Chen Muwu had finally appeared at his home in London, but it was said that this man had become very strange recently and refused to see guests.

He came to visit with the attitude of giving it a try. He thought he might be rejected, but unexpectedly he was able to successfully meet with Chen Muwu.

In addition to Zhu Guangqian, Chen Muwu also met at home in London Zheng Zhenduo, who was disheartened by the domestic situation because of the massacre last April, so he boarded a ship on the Sea of ​​​​Sea to stay away from the land of right and wrong and traveled to various European countries.

This person is not a new friend, he is also an old acquaintance of Chen Muwu.

After graduating from university, Chen Muwu worked as an engineer at the Lianglu Railway Administration Bureau in Sihai.

Zheng Zhenduo was also a practitioner in the railway system. After graduating from the Beijing Railway Management School in 1921, he was assigned to Hainan Station, the starting station of the Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo Railway, as a trainee stationmaster. He and Engineer Chen belonged to the same two lines. jurisdiction of the Railway Administration.

The two of them were workers who had met a few times in Wuhai, so Zheng Zhenduo left his hometown and came to the UK this time. Chen Muwu warmly received him at home.

Chen Muwu is receiving friends in London and preparing for the wedding. Various things are constantly happening in the world.

In January, bacteriologist Frederick Griffith of the University of Liverpool performed the famous Griffith experiment that bears his surname.

Chen Muwu clearly remembers this experiment because it was once an unavoidable experiment in the chapter on genetic material in middle school biology textbooks.

Griffith used two different strains of Streptococcus pneumoniae to attack the immune systems of mice. The rough type of Streptococcus pneumoniae is non-toxic to mice, while the smooth type of Streptococcus pneumoniae is lethal to mice.

He used these two bacteria to perform some permutations and combinations, and then observed the life and death of the mice. He finally came to a conclusion: that is, the dead smooth bacteria contained a certain substance, or a transformation factor, that could make the mice non-toxic. Rough bacteria transform into deadly bacteria.

Later, through research by others, the transformation factor discovered by Griffith was actually the DNA of Streptococcus pneumoniae. The Griffith experiment he performed indirectly proved that DNA is genetic material in the history of biology. First experiment.

But people today don't think so, and Griffith was even ridiculed by his American colleagues.

In the mid-to-late 1920s, due to the rapid economic development brought about by Coolidge's prosperity, more and more Americans began to change their mentality.

They no longer believed that Britain and Europe were the center of science and culture. Instead, they began to laugh at them, the poor Europeans who had no money, as shabby and pedantic.

After Griffith published his experiments, he was also ridiculed and questioned by Oswald Avery, the leading figure in American research on Streptococcus pneumoniae.

The latter believed that Griffith did not successfully conduct this experiment because his laboratory environment in the UK was too crude, and the high temperature did not completely kill the bacteria. He failed to completely control the death of smooth bacteria, leaving the two After the bacteria are mixed, there are still some active smooth bacteria present.

It was these active bacteria that caused the death of the mice. It was not the smooth bacteria that produced some transformation factors after death that made the harmless rough bacteria lethal.

Fortunately, the truth is irrefutable. Griffith's experiment was quickly reproduced by Avery's American colleagues in the laboratory of American universities, thus proving that his experimental results were correct. This made the arrogant Avery shut his mouth completely.

As a pioneer in DNA research, Griffith did not win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. This is because he and his assistants died in the German attack on Britain more than ten years later in World War II. The bombing of London.

The two successive world wars not only shifted the center of the world from Britain and Europe to the United States, but also caused the United Kingdom to lose many outstanding scientists.

For example, Moseley died in the trenches of World War I, and Griffiths died in the bombing of London.

Since the British don't value their country's talents so much, I'm sorry to say that Chen Muwu will be ready to take action in advance.

(End of this chapter)