Reborn and become a Great Scientist

Chapter 44 Chapter 44

The resentment that Compton had accumulated in his heart for a long time finally found an outlet.

After returning to the laboratory at the University of Chicago, he immediately wrote a letter to Harvard University. The letter was full of all kinds of dirty words, and he yelled at Professor Duane.

Compton then wrote to the American Physical Society at Columbia University, requesting the editorial board of Physical Review that he withdraw the paper he had submitted at the end of December last year.

After reorganizing the paper, he asked someone to translate it into German, and sent it to the "Physical Yearbook" in Berlin.

……

Compton from the University of Chicago is not the only one who received this issue of "Physics Yearbook" in North America across the ocean.

As Compton's rival, Professor Duane of Harvard University also received this journal.

But because he was concentrating on finding the absurdity of Compton's paper as soon as possible in the laboratory, he hadn't had time to open the journal to see what new discoveries the physics colleagues in the world had made.

Until two days later, he received a letter from Compton from Chicago, the letter was filthy, and at the beginning, he swears at himself, calling himself a vaquita, a corpse meal, Unlearned, mediocre people.

Duane was at a loss, thinking to himself, what the hell is going on with Compton?
At the end of the letter, Duane saw that Compton asked him to read an article in the latest issue of "Annual Review of Physics" to see if the stubborn man was smarter than Planck and Einstein, And be right.

In fact, Duane is not an idiot. He refused to publish Compton’s paper not because he did not support the light quantum hypothesis cited in the paper. On the contrary, he was one of the first physicists in the United States to support the light quantum hypothesis.

Since Millikan used precise experiments to confirm the correctness of Einstein's explanation of the photoelectric effect with light quanta, Duane followed closely, and in 1921, he personally guided two doctoral students under him to re-measure and calculate with the X-ray method. Planck's constant.

他们将求得的普朗克常数精确结果h=(6.556±0.009)×10^-27erg·s【1】发表在了《美国国家科学院院刊》上，这一结果被物理学界沿用了长达16年之久。

So when Duane saw Compton's letter saying that there was a paper that was favored by Planck, the father of quantum, and Einstein, the proposer of the light quantum hypothesis, he immediately asked his secretary to find the latest issue of "Physics Academic Yearbook".

Although this gentleman also does not speak German, he can also guess the general content of the paper through symbols, formulas and schematic diagrams, which are common languages ​​in the physics world.

He also recognized the signature under the title, which should be a Chinese.

Duane found Ye Qisun who was writing his doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Percy Bridgman, and asked the same question as Compton: "Dr. Ye, do you know that there is such a physicist named Chen Muwu in your country?" Scientist? The name Muwu (move), you can read it, and he seems to be a person who is destined to study physics."

Ye Qisun was one of the two doctoral students who helped Duane determine the Planck constant. He was a Gengzi student studying in the United States in 1918. After finishing his graduation thesis this year, he will leave for China.

Having been abroad for many years, he naturally didn't know that Chen Muwu was a rising star in the field of physics in China, so he shook his head honestly and said, "I'm sorry, Professor Du An, I haven't received any domestic papers for a long time. It’s news, I didn’t know there was such a gentleman.”

Duane nodded, as if he was talking to him, but also as if he was talking to himself: "Could it be that I was really wrong this time?"

Ye Qisun was born in Tsinghua Academy. When the school was established, it was a preparatory school for studying in the United States. In order to send students to study in the United States, English was naturally the only foreign language.

He didn't know how to comfort his big boss, and he couldn't translate German papers for him like Wu Youxun did. After standing there awkwardly for a while, he could only quietly exit Duane's office.

……

Originally, at the end of the nineteenth century, Europe was the center of physics experiments.

But as the United States gets richer, they are more eager to have more say in science.

So the Yankees invested a lot of money to build laboratories one after another with advanced equipment and observatories with large-aperture telescopes, and the results and observations they made were more accurate than those of their poor cousins ​​in Europe.

From Maxwell's use of an octagonal prism to measure the speed of light and the conclusion that the speed of light is constant with an interferometer, to Millikan's oil drop experiment and the precise photoelectric effect, to Duane's precise determination of Planck's constant, and Compton's In this way, the experimental center of physics gradually shifted from Europe to the American continent.

In this way, a large number of physicists with no money and a lot of free time appeared in Europe.

As Rutherford said, "Because I have no money, I have to think hard." They put all the energy they got off into theoretical research, making theoretical physics wave after wave of climax, appearing On the land of Europe at the beginning of the 30th century, it reached its peak until the early [-]s.

Although American universities are rich and powerful, they are ultimately insufficient. That's why they have always adhered to the idea that "foreign monks can chant scriptures", and they did not hesitate to spend a lot of money to invite famous European physicists to give lectures around the United States.

Famous artists who have been invited include Lorenz, Planck, Einstein last year, and Arnold Sommerfeld this year.

As the dean of the School of Theoretical Physics at the University of Munich, although Sommerfeld has never won a Nobel Prize, he is the physicist who has received the most nominations for physics awards (81 times) in the world and has taught the most physics. award winners.

Sommerfeld's greatest contribution to physics is the fine structure constant α he proposed. Countless famous physicists are fascinated by the number 137.

Before Pauli’s death, he was excited because the room number of the ward he lived in was 137; and Eddington was a faithful believer in the 137 religion. He believed that the reciprocal of the fine structure constant 1/α must be and must be 137.

Sommerfeld happened to be at Stanford University, preparing for tomorrow's lecture, when he saw the new issue of the Annals of Physics.

*****
【1】笔者注：erg（尔格）为厘米—克—秒单位制（CGS）中能量和功的单位，1erg（尔格）等于1dyn（达因）的力使物体在力的方向上移动1cm（厘米）所作的功。尔格和国际单位制（SI）中能量和功的单位J（焦耳）之间的换算关系为，1erg=10^-7J。另外，力的单位dyn和N（牛顿）之间的换算关系为1dyn=10^-5N。

(End of this chapter)