shadow of britain

Chapter 535: An honorary doctorate is not a doctorate?

Without bold guesses, there would be no great discoveries.

—Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss
The main auditorium of the University of Göttingen has a vaulted ceiling painted with ancient Greek and Roman mythology patterns, and wooden benches are neatly arranged, solemn and dignified. The sun shines into the hall through the tall stained glass windows, reflecting on the academic honor shields and portraits of historical figures on the wall, adding a sacred color to this century-old academic hall.

Professors in black robes, holding lecture notes and notebooks, were arriving one after another. They quickly found their familiar seats on the benches and chatted in groups of three or five, some discussing the latest developments in their respective disciplines, while others were talking about the young Sir Arthur Hastings, the special representative of the country who had just taken office.

After the Frankfurt Garrison incident, the professors generally believed that the Ministry of Education would send a traditional hard-line aristocrat to serve as the Chancellor of the University of Göttingen. In fact, when they first learned about Sir Arthur Hastings' resume, the professors also thought that their previous speculation was indeed confirmed.

According to British newspapers, before coming to the University of Göttingen, the young knight was once the most notorious police chief in Britain. During the British parliamentary reform in 1832, he once ordered the firing of demonstrators. After he left Scotland Yard, many of the dark secrets during Arthur Hastings' tenure were gradually revealed.

Although no one could produce relevant evidence, the Fleet Street media in London insisted that Arthur Hastings, while serving as director of the Police Intelligence Bureau, had bribed ruffians to act as police informants and made it easy for these criminals to monitor the kind-hearted citizens of London from all aspects.

According to some local informants who wish to remain anonymous, the villain Arthur Hastings deserves to be charged with multiple felonies, including but not limited to: abuse of power to interfere in the bidding for the purchase of police equipment, retaliating against others, transferring money and political benefits to specific groups of people, interfering with judicial investigations by tampering with evidence and influencing witnesses, etc.

Of course, Fleet Street's assessment of Sir Arthur Hastings was not all one-sidedly critical.

The Times, in which the Rothschild family has a stake, The Briton, London's hottest fashion and literary magazine, The Economist, the most popular political and economics magazine among City bankers, and other media, all unanimously support Sir Arthur Hastings.

Some time ago, The Times praised Sir Arthur Hastings as the greatest and most professional British policeman in the 19th century.

He made his debut with an impassioned speech, helping the British people end the dark history of the Bloody Code.

And on the night of the London riots, he escorted the country through the last ray of darkness before dawn with extraordinary calmness and stability.

After the parliamentary reform was completed, Arthur Hastings "left with his work done, hiding his achievements and fame".

He regarded high positions and generous salaries as dirt. Although the Home Office tried again and again to retain him, Sir Arthur Hastings resolutely resigned from his post as Assistant Commissioner of Police of the Royal London Metropolitan Police and took the initiative to take all the blame for some extreme actions taken by the London Metropolitan Police on the night of the riots.

Inspector Ledley King of Scotland Yard burst into tears when he was interviewed and said: "On the day when the Sir left Scotland Yard, I begged him not to leave us, but the Sir just stood by the window with his hands behind his back and looked up at the sun. He told us: 'If someone must be responsible for this, I hope that person is me, and only me.'"

Senior police officers who are highly trusted by the public, including Inspector Tony Eckhart, Inspector Tom Flanders and Inspector Thomas Plunkett, also confirmed to the Times reporter: "That's right."

Journalists at The Times were also heartbroken over the loss of such an outstanding police commander by the British public, and they later launched a poll on Sir Arthur Hastings in the newspaper.

The final voting results showed that 50% of the voters wanted the Sir to return to Scotland Yard, while the remaining 50% demanded the executioner under the Tower of London be hanged.

What’s even more interesting is that the reasons given by voters who demanded Arthur’s return and those who demanded Arthur’s hanging were surprisingly consistent: everyone believed that Arthur Hastings was too capable.

However, whether Arthur Hastings was a capable and honest police officer or a capable executioner, he should have taken action after taking office as the proctor of the University of Göttingen.

But what the professors didn't expect was that after the new director took office, he didn't produce a single big news, not even a small piece of news.

The only thing the professors knew was that on his first day in office, Proctor Hastings was arrested by the Göttingen Police Department as a rioting student.

However, he neither retaliated against the police chief as the London media reported, nor did he order severe punishment for the rioting students.

After a few days of calm, the professors learned from the law school professors that they occasionally saw the new supervisor "military training" the problem student Bismarck on the school lawn.

Bismarck's name was well-known in Göttingen, and even professors from other colleges had heard of this guy.

So after hearing the news, the professors who couldn't bear the loneliness would go for a walk towards the law school on a whim after teaching and research.

By the time these elderly professors wandered over to the law school, they discovered that the news of Bismarck's "ruthless suppression" had spread among the student body much faster than they had.

The law school has seen a dramatic increase in traffic in the past week, and is showing signs of replacing the City Hall Cellar Tavern as the 'most popular tourist attraction for students'.

Although the beating of Bismarck was popular among students, in the eyes of some old-school professors, the behavior of the new proctor was no different from that of an ordinary student, and judging from his age, it seemed to be the case.

Although these professors, who had obtained their teaching positions after going through untold hardships, did not say it out loud, they were still quite dissatisfied with the Ministry of Education's practice of parachuting in new school supervisors.

Although the appointment procedures for Sir Arthur Hastings were legal, they did not strictly follow the appointment procedures for German university professors.

Just like the German character, the appointment process for professors at German universities has always been known for its rigorous and meticulousness.

When hiring a subject professor at a university, the following steps are generally followed.

First, the school introduces the positions and describes the value of the professor positions to be recruited, and publishes recruitment advertisements in academic journals and news media for open recruitment.

Then, the school will set up a special recruitment committee to be responsible for matters related to the recruitment of professors.

After receiving the application information from the job seekers, the committee verifies the applicants' qualifications and conducts preliminary screening, and based on the preliminary screening results, conducts final interviews.

Finally, the committee will recommend three candidates to the school based on the interview results. The president will have a recruitment interview with the candidates according to their rankings and decide who will be hired. Indeed, in the emerging field of electromagnetism, Arthur Hastings, as a collaborator of Faraday, is absolutely qualified to take the teaching position at the University of Göttingen. Even if it is an open recruitment, the professors have no doubt that this young man can beat other competitors.

However, he had a flaw: he was not a PhD graduate. Only PhD graduates could be professors, which was a strict rule of the University of Göttingen.

Although Sir Arthur Hastings' doctoral degree certificate had been sent to Göttingen by the University of London a few days ago, any discerning person could see that the certificate was reissued later.

Because it clearly stated that in view of Sir Arthur Hastings' outstanding contributions to the field of electromagnetism, the President of the University of London, Mr. Leonard Horner, decided to award him an honorary doctorate in physics.

Because of this, some professors privately speculated that the new dean had not convened the teaching meeting until now because his honorary doctorate had not yet arrived from across the English Channel a few days ago.

In a sense, the professors guessed right, but they were only half right.

The other half of the reason was that a few days ago, Professor Gauss and Professor Weber were looking for Sir Arthur Hastings in Göttingen, hoping that he could help guide the construction of telegraph lines and conduct in-depth academic exchanges in electromagnetism, mathematics and other fields.

Arthur originally thought that after escaping the French Academy of Sciences and coming to Göttingen, he had finally climbed out of the bottomless tunnel.

But what he never expected was that the University of Göttingen, which was then in its heyday, could completely compete with the French Academy of Sciences on its own.

Or to put it more bluntly, they only needed to send Professor Gauss to fight back and forth with Poisson, Cauchy and others.

After all, this man was the real number one in Europe. At the beginning, Arthur only carried the six departments and twenty-three police districts of Scotland Yard on his shoulders, but Gauss carried the mathematics community of France, Germany, Britain, Russia and even the whole of Europe and the world on his shoulders.

Amid the professors' discussions, the sound of heavy footsteps suddenly came from outside the auditorium.

Sir Arthur Hastings, the new rector of the University of Göttingen and special representative of the country, walked slowly into the hall, and his appearance immediately attracted the attention of the professors.

As a young man of twenty-four, Arthur has a slender figure and a serious yet dignified expression.

He was wearing a stylish cycling suit and looked exhausted, as if he had just returned from outside.

On the chest of his cycling jersey was the emblem of the Kingdom of Hanover, a symbol of national authority. The ribbon symbolizing honor swayed slightly with his steps, and every step seemed to declare his dual identity as a school supervisor and a national representative.

Arthur walked up the wooden steps one step at a time. His steps were firm. At first glance, one would think he was a genuine German military nobleman, rather than a British lord who had come across the ocean from London.

Arthur stood in front of the podium, his eyes slowly swept across the entire hall, and then fixed on Professor Johann Herbart, the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, who was familiar to him: "Shall we begin?"

Professor Herbart, the assistant dean, stood up and nodded slightly, saying, "Except for Gauss and Weber and those who stayed in the capital for the meeting, all the other professors are here."

"Hmm?" Arthur pretended to be ignorant and asked, "Is there anything wrong with Professors Gauss and Weber?"

"Professor Gauss has been in charge of leading the geodetic surveying work of the Kingdom of Hanover since 1816. The workload of this project is very large, so he has to travel every now and then."

"I see." Arthur smiled and said, "That's a pity. I thought I would finally have the chance to meet this world-famous scholar today, but I didn't expect to miss it. But it doesn't matter. There will be other opportunities in the future anyway."

Professor Herbart carefully noted Arthur's request and said, "If you need to meet with Gauss, I will notify him to go to the Dean's Office as soon as he comes back. Electromagnetism is a new subject in the school. In order to get off to a good start, I think it is necessary to mobilize all current academic resources to give this subject some preference."

When Arthur heard this, he stopped talking and said, "I will go to see Mr. Gauss when he comes back. Scholars like him must be very busy. I can't take up too much of his energy."

"Don't worry about that."

Herbart put the pen in his jacket pocket. The old scholar replied seriously, "Gauss told me before that he wanted to meet you. He said that Mr. Navi and Mr. Coriolis of the Paris Academy of Sciences wrote him a letter saying that you solved the fluid mechanics equations that had troubled Navi for a long time in Paris, and also played a great role in inspiring Mr. Coriolis's latest research. Mr. Gauss also encountered a problem recently, and he was thinking of discussing it with you."

Arthur's face turned green when he heard this. He stood on the stage for a long time without saying a word: "I..."

But the professors in the audience exclaimed in amazement.

If just now they still had doubts about Arthur's academic ability, now, all they had left was praise.

Everyone knows what a genius Gauss is. If even he recognizes the academic ability of Dean Arthur Hastings, then there is nothing wrong with the school giving him a teaching position in electromagnetism.

In the eyes of these professors, Gauss's praise is much more important than a doctoral degree.

What is even more commendable is that a 24-year-old young man, who received Gauss's praise, was able to stand on the stage calmly and unperturbed, and was not happy or sad because of anything else.

This calmness and composure alone is enough to show that this young man is indeed different from others.

The professors murmured quietly: "This dean is really not a simple person."

(End of this chapter)