"Peter, I have to say, apart from that crocodile welded to the top of the radiator, you have a really good car! How much did it cost? ”

Sitting in the brand-new convertible, Chen Muwu asked his first question.

He has no specific concept of the price of cars in this era, except for reading in junior high school history textbooks that Ford Model T can buy one for a few hundred dollars, Chen Muwu has only learned about the price of Rolls-Royce once, as high as 2,000 pounds a piece, which can withstand dozens of Ford cars.

Although he has not heard the name of this car in front of him, the workmanship from the inside out is very good, if the price is reasonable, he wonders if he can buy one himself, to be an old driver in this era?

But Kapitsa's answer directly shattered Chen Muwu's thoughts: "I have the latest car this year, so I spent 1,200 pounds." ”

The price was staggering.

Can't afford it, it's really unaffordable.

What is 1,200 pounds bad, Kapitsa is not conspicuous on weekdays, but the son of this Tsarist general is really rich.

After the car started, Chen Muwu's eyes fell on the crocodile sculpture welded to the radiator again, and he couldn't help asking: "Peter, I have always had a question, that is, why do you always call the director 'crocodile' in private?" ”

Kapitsa smiled and pressed the automatic ignition button next to the steering wheel: "Chen, you must think that crocodiles are very ferocious animals, right?"

"But in fact, the crocodile is one of my favorite animals, and in our country, the crocodile is also a symbol of the head of the family, which is admired and aweed.

Nearly ten years ago, a writer of children's literature named Korniej Chukovsky wrote a fairy tale poem entitled "Crocodile", and the image of the crocodile became a household name throughout the country.

"People like it with awe, and it's the same feeling I have for the director."

In the previous life, when Chen Muwu was not born, Su Lian was no longer in this world. He had only read the texts of Gorky and Ostrovsky in Chinese textbooks, and had no idea that the crocodile was one of Sulian's well-known literary figures:

"All I know is that in another fairy tale, Peter Pan, there was a clumsy crocodile who swallowed an alarm clock in his stomach.

"I thought I was sarcastic about the director's loud voice, and every time I did an experiment in the laboratory, I could hear his voice from outside the door before I met him."

Unexpectedly, after listening to Chen Muwu's jokes, Kapitsa did not let out a hearty laugh as usual, but said very seriously: "I don't dare to sarcastically mock the teacher, in fact, I admire him very much, I admire him for his straightforwardness, tirelessness, extraordinary ability, and through appropriate interrogation, he can discover the deepest secrets of nature." I have great respect for Sir Rutherford. ”

Capitsa, of course, respected Rutherford.

There was basically no one in the entire Cavendish lab who didn't respect the majestic bearded director.

Except for Oppenheimer, who was rejected by Rutherford when he first applied to enter the laboratory, and after finding a relationship with Old Tom Sun, he was led into the Cavendish laboratory by Chen Muwu.

He still has some jealousy of this old New Zealand man who can't see pearls, but he sees that his teacher Chen Muwu has always shown respect for Rutherford, so he doesn't dare to show too much jealousy.

Of course, Rutherford does deserve the respect of all.

Because he used the limited funding of the Cavendish laboratory to create infinite possibilities.

It was assumed that without Rutherford's leadership, the Cavendish Laboratory might not have been as thriving as it is today.

Before Chen Muwu arrived at Cambridge University in England and entered the Cavendish laboratory, Kapitsa could be regarded as Rutherford's second favorite student besides Bohr.

Although at the beginning, he also rejected this student from Su Lian as he rejected Oppenheimer.

Later, in 1934, Kapitsa returned to China to visit his family, and under the persuasion of the Sulian government, he stayed in the country to train talents for the development of physics in his homeland, like his teacher Yofy.

But Rutherford did not think so, he has always been skeptical of the Uh-huh-ism, always thinking that the Sulian government forcibly detained his beloved students in the country, so he wrote letters to the Soviet embassy in Britain many times, and even sent them directly to the Sulian country.

Although each letter was in vain, Rutherford eventually agreed to Sulen's government's request, and he copied all the equipment of the Mondstadt Laboratory under the Cavendish Laboratory (where Capitsa was the director at the time) and sold it to Suren to establish the Institute of Physics Problems, so that his beloved disciples could continue to conduct physics research in his home country.

"Peter, since you said that you respect the director very much, so when he celebrates his birthday, do you really plan to give him such a gift?"

Chen Muwu's eyes were still looking at the crocodile in front of him.

"Of course not, I'm going to send the teacher a song about crocodiles, I have already composed the song in advance, and I am still in the stage of polishing the lyrics."

Chen Muwu always felt that Kapitsa's idea was less reliable than the one just now.

However, listening to Kapitsa's song about crocodiles, Chen Muwu always couldn't help but think of the demonic brainwashing children's song in his previous life, "A stupid B, and he still wears cool ......".

I don't know if it's appropriate to sing such a song to him at Rutherford's birthday party.

The more Chen Muwu thought about it, the more interesting it became, and after the time crossing with the addition of German, he even began to hum softly, trying to recall what the lyrics of the song really were: "Ich bin Schnappi das kleine Krokodil......"

"Chen, what are you singing?"

Although his voice was small when he hummed, it still caught the attention of Kapitsa next to him.

"When you say that, I also think of a children's song about crocodiles."

"That's really good, are you going to sing it to the director with me?"

"I ......"

Chen Muwu originally wanted to agree, but suddenly found that things were going a little strangely, and he seemed to have unconsciously fallen into Kapitsa's logic.

He didn't want to sing such a shameful song at Rutherford's birthday party.

Therefore, Chen Muwu hurriedly changed the topic: "Peter, you said you would take me for a ride, so where are we going?" ”

"Well, I haven't figured it out yet, it's just going around Cambridgeshire, right?"

"Well, you dropped me off at the train station outside the city, and it occurred to me that I had something to do to make a trip to London."

"No problem!"

At the beginning, Chen Muwu was just pulled by Kapitsa for a ride.

As a result, he was sent to London by his good friend.

Chen Muwu went to London, what else could he do besides buying gifts for Rutherford?

He felt that the Chinese people had always paid attention to etiquette, and there was really no reason to go to the door empty-handed to celebrate his birthday like Kapitsa.

Because this journey was improvised, Chen Muwu, who sat in a third-class carriage for the first time in his life, endured the soot smoke from the chimney of the locomotive, and was troubled by what kind of gift to buy for his teacher after arriving in London.

……

But he is not the only one in this world who is distressed.

At the same time, in a conference room in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences building in Stockholm, Sweden, the Nobel Prize in Physics jury is holding an impromptu jury meeting here.

Since the beginning of this spring, the jury has been receiving nomination letters from others one after another.

Receiving letters, recording nominations, discussing candidates, and finally going through layers of voting and screening, one or more Nobel Prize winners in physics of the year can be finally selected, or if you think that there are no achievements that year can be finally awarded, you can choose to have a bye for this year's award.

After all this is done, they will report the final result to the Nobel Prize Committee, and the rest of the awarding work will have nothing to do with them.

So at first, the members of the judging committee were not impressed, it was just a few nomination letters, and they received quite a few every year.

However, as more and more letters poured in from Europe and the United States, some people in the judging committee began to sit still.

Although there are many experts and scholars who are eligible to nominate for the Nobel Prize in Physics, not everyone exercises this right every year.

In previous years, the jury would receive about 20 or 30 letters about the nomination letters for the Nobel Prize in Physics, so they didn't have much work in a year.

But this year, the number of letters they received skyrocketed, with the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, the United States, and even Canada, which had not received a letter in many years, sending nomination letters to the jury.

And most of these letters only nominated one person, a Chinese doctor from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, Chen Muwu.

For the first time in more than 20 years, the jury of the Physics Prize nominated the same person on such a large scale, and it made them have to pay attention to this somewhat strange matter.

The judging committee is all physics majors, or physics-related majors, so it is natural that they have all heard of this young man who has stood out in the physics community in the past year or so, Chen Muwu.

But after receiving so many nomination letters, the first thing they did was not to review Chen Muwu's qualifications for the award, but first sent a reply letter with the same content to everyone who sent the nomination letter to nominate Chen Muwu, asking whether they had received bribes or bribes from Chen Muwu, so they nominated him to compete for the award this year.

No way, who made Chen Muwu a Chinese, an East Asian, or even an Asian they looked down on?

Soon after, the nominees' replies were sent to Stockholm again.

Not only did they unanimously deny this, but some people, such as Rutherford, Thomson, and Prague Sr. in Britain, Albert Einstein in Germany, Marie Curie and Langevin in France, and Bohr in Denmark, even protested to a greater or lesser extent in their letters, accusing the Nobel Prize Committee in Physics of this kind of behavior as a very serious act of racial discrimination.

However, after receiving this accusation, the members of the judging committee did not have any psychological burden.

After all, now that the anti-racial discrimination has not stood on the moral high ground at all, and the Ku Klux Klan Party in the United States is so popular, no one will think that all beings are equal, and the lives of white people are indeed more noble than the lives of other colored races.

But since Chen Muwu received so many nominations at once, the judges of the committee had to consider whether to follow everyone's wishes and award this year's Nobel Prize in Physics to this not very likable Chinese.

Therefore, this temporary review committee meeting was convened for this purpose.

"Gentlemen, what nominations have we received other than that Cambridge Chinese?"

After the meeting began, Alvar Gulstrand, chairman of the Nobel Prize in Physics jury, asked questions.

He was a Swedish ophthalmologist and professor of optics at Uppsala University, where he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1911 for his work on an optical model of the human eyeball.

The reason why this person can leave his name in history is not so glorious, and it has a bit of a stink for thousands of years.

As a professor of optics, Goulstrand was a big believer in the theory of the ether.

This led to his resolute opposition to Einstein's theory of relativity, and it was under his stubborn resistance that Einstein could not win the Nobel Prize in Physics for this great discovery for more than ten years after the theory of relativity was proposed.

In the end, the people who nominated Einstein had to save the country, so that the reason why Einstein won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922 was not because of the theory of relativity, but because of the photoelectric effect.

As a professor of optics and a true believer in wave theory, Gulstrand also did not want to affirm the existence of photons.

However, compared to the theory of relativity, a monster that may overthrow the absolute view of space-time in classical mechanics, the photoelectric effect is barely acceptable.

But in Einstein's award speech, Goulstrand also used a small trick.

He only said that Einstein's theory could explain this experimental phenomenon well, completely ignoring the existence of light quanta.

Nowadays, Chen Muwu has used Chen's scattering experiment as a supplement to the photoelectric effect experiment, clearly pointing out that light is a particle, and also named it photon.

This behavior of his completely stepped on the pain point of Gulstrand.

Therefore, in the heart of the chairman of the jury, nothing can make this Chinese person, Einstein's Chinese believer, win the award.

So Gulstrand asked the first question after the beginning of the meeting, thinking that as long as there were other nominees who were also eligible to win the award, he would definitely not succumb to the coercion of many nominees, and resolutely refused to award this year's physics prize to Chen Muwu.

"Sir, in addition to this Chen Muwu, we did receive several nominations for other people."

"Who are they?" Hearing an affirmative answer, Gulstrand asked impatiently.

"Professor Henri Le Chatletle, Ecole Polytechnique de Paris, Sorbonne University, France, nominated ......"

The man was talking, and gradually lost his voice.

"Speak, who did Professor Le Châtret nominee?"

"Well, sir, as in previous years, Professor Le Châtelet still nominated Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière on the grounds that they had invented cinema."

Le Chatlet, who discovered the principle of Le Chatre about chemical equilibrium movement, never won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in his life.

But this did not prevent him, as a nominee for the Nobel Prize, who had been nominating his French compatriots, the Lumière brothers, for the Nobel Prize in Physics since 1920.

After three years of nominations, in 1923 Le Chartret did not send another three-page nomination letter to Stockholm.

Just when the Nobel Prize in Physics review committee felt that the old professor had finally died down and Ming Jin withdrew his troops, they did not expect him to make a comeback.

If Chen Muwu is not given this award, but to the Lumière brothers, who invented the movie, Goullstrand feels that once this matter is announced, it will be a loss of life.

So he shook his head and said, "Are there any other candidates?" ”

Another judge then spoke:

"Sir, David Jordan, former president of Stanford University in the United States, has nominated Sir Ernest Rutherford of Cambridge University in England."

"Why?"

"Mr. Jordan didn't give a reason."

It is true that there is no need to give any reason, it is reasonable for Rutherford to win the Nobel Prize in Physics, I really don't know why the early Nobel Prize Committee smoked the wind to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to him.

Gulstrand was a little confused.

He had the impression that after Rutherford succeeded Sir Thomson as director of the Cavendish Laboratory, he gradually took a back seat and focused on the management of the laboratory.

Coupled with the fact that Gulstrand himself is an ophthalmologist and is located in remote northern Europe, he does not always receive first-hand information about physics in a timely manner.

He secretly scolded this nominee named Jordan in his heart, complaining about why he didn't write the reason well.

But Gulstrand thought about it again, and Rutherford was also a good candidate for the award.

If he really did something that could be said to be justified, it would be okay to award him this year's Nobel Prize in Physics.

From McGill University in Canada, to Victoria University in Manchester, to the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, Rutherford is full of peach and plum all over the world, and it is also a matter of great expectation that he can win the award.

In this way, you can kill two birds with one stone at the same time, and no one should care about why the Chinese did not win the Nobel Prize in physics.

Gulstrand was desperate to find a reason to give Rutherford the award.

"In physics, have Sir Rutherford made any recent major discoveries?"

"Sir, in 1919, Sir Rutherford bombarded nitrogen atoms with alpha particles to obtain protons and a new carbon atom, which was the first discovery in human history of nuclear transmutation, that is, the transformation of a chemical element into another element, or the conversion of one isotope of a chemical element into another.

"And last winter, a new paper from the Cavendish lab found that they had captured the nuclear reaction in the clouds, further confirming the correctness of Sir Rutherford's discovery."

To be sure, Goullstrand felt that Rutherford's discovery was not that weighty, and that in previous years, he might have tried to compete for the Nobel Prize in physics.

But this year, there is a hanging Chen Muwu, and Rutherford's nuclear transmutation seems to be even more ineffective.

But he still didn't give up: "Is there a relevant paper?" Let me see. ”

After a brief reading of the paper, Goulstrand discovered the fallacies in Rutherford's theory.

He initially thought that bombarding a nitrogen atom with an alpha particle would give a proton, plus a carbon-13, and then the incident alpha particle would bounce off.

But the cloud chamber photos provided by the Cavendish lab suggest that the entire process of nuclear transmutation is that the alpha particles are fused into the nitrogen nucleus, and a proton is emitted to produce a new oxygen atom, oxygen-17.

If you want to award this year's Nobel Prize in Physics to Rutherford for nuclear transmutation, you must bring the author of the latter paper, the Cavendish Laboratory.

Then Gulstrand was in the author column of the paper and saw a familiar name.

Chen Muwu.

And the first author of the paper also thanked him very much, saying that if he hadn't found such a special trajectory in thousands of photos and proposed that the product of the nuclear reaction was not carbon-13, but oxygen-17, the experiment would have been in trouble, and I don't know when the right answer would be found.

Gulstrand never thought that he could see Chen Muwu's name here.

There are many letters from the jury nominating Chen Muwu, and the reasons given in them are also varied.

But there has never been a letter that nominates Chen Muwu on the basis of this merit.

Perhaps in the hearts of physicists, this small nuclear transmutation is nothing compared to Chen Muwu's other achievements.

It seems that the only way to do so is to get rid of Sir Rutherford and replace the next nominee.

Gulstrand asked, somewhat hopelessly, "Are there any other nominees?" ”

"Professor James Frank of the University of Göttingen, Germany, nominated Patrick Blackett, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK."

"Why?"

"In the photographs he took of the cloud room, he discovered the first isotope of oxygen, oxygen-17."

Gulstrand couldn't laugh or cry.

Not to mention, the discovery of isotopes should be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, not in Physics.

Not to mention, only one oxygen-17 has been found to be enough to qualify.

The point is, the name Blackett, Goullstrand always felt that he had seen it somewhere.

He lowered his head and found that the first author of the paper in his hand, the one in front of Chen Muwu, was the new nominee, Blackett.

Goulstrand was desperate now, and he felt that Chen Muwu was like a ghost beside him, everywhere.

It seems that it will not be easy to bypass him to select this year's Nobel Prize in Physics.

I didn't expect it, but I still updated. Ask for a ticket!

(End of chapter)