After listening to Eddington's complaints, Thomson took Chen Muwu's paper and read it carefully. As expected, he became very interested.
He said to Eddington: "Since the "Philosophical Journal" does not want it, then we will publish it in the "Transactions of the Natural Sciences" of the Royal Society."
Yes, the Dean of Trinity College in front of him also has another identity, that is, the 42nd President of the Royal Society.
Although he has left office, Thomson's status in the Royal Society remains high. Thomson then said to Eddington: "I can write a letter of recommendation tonight and send it to the Royal Society.
“However, I would like to show this paper to Ernest first, maybe he will also be interested in it.
"Ask him to find someone to design an experiment to test whether this new theory is right or wrong. It would be great if the experimental results can be published simultaneously with the paper in the next issue of Proceedings of the Natural Science."
When the name Ernest is mentioned, the first reaction of the general public should be the tough guy Ernest Hemingway, the author of the text "The Old Man and the Sea" that they learned in primary school textbooks.
The first reaction of the innocent Douban literary youth was a niche British poet who was good at showing off, Ernest Dawson.
For Chen Muwu, a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, this name represents the founder of their profession.
After receiving the invitation to become Dean of Trinity College, Thomson not only immediately resigned as President of the Royal Society, but also announced that he would no longer serve as Director of the Cavendish Laboratory.
As the successor to the post of director of the laboratory, Thomson selected his own student, praised by the Encyclopedia Britannica as "the greatest experimental physicist in the world after Faraday", the 1908 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, Ernest Ted Rutherford.
Early the next morning, Rutherford received the paper delivered by Eddington himself.
Rutherford and Eddington were both graduates of Trinity College and from the Cavendish Department, so they were very close.
The latter conveyed the instruction of their common mentor Thomson to the former, asking him to study this paper carefully. If he is interested, it is best to design an experiment to verify it. The Royal Society's "Transactions of the Natural Sciences" has already provided it for him. The experimental results have reserved space.
In order to attract Rutherford's attention, Eddington also brought out his idol who was also a teacher and friend, saying that the author of this paper was an unparalleled genius discovered by Einstein when he was lecturing in the East.
Unlike Eddington, Rutherford still maintained his attitude towards old-school physicists, advocating that "physics is an experimental science."
He also once said a famous saying: "A thorough experiment is worth all the theories in the world, even if this theory is Bohr's."
Bohr, who won the Nobel Prize with Einstein late last year, is one of Rutherford's most famous students.
Emphasis on experiment does not mean that he despises theory. After sending Eddington away, Rutherford returned to his office with the paper.
Eddington's words instead aroused Rutherford's curiosity. He also wanted to see how many people could be favored by Einstein, a popular colleague.
As soon as I read the beginning, Rutherford suddenly felt like he was dreaming about something that happened when he was a teenager late at night.
After graduating from the Cavendish Laboratory, Rutherford originally planned to stay in Cambridge and seek a teaching position, but unexpectedly, his teacher Thomson sent him to McGill University in Montreal across the Atlantic.
The reason why it is called distribution is because at the end of the 19th century more than 20 years ago, Europe's academic center position was even more unshakable. The United States was already considered a less popular cousin. Compared with the United States, Canada was even more unpopular. .
Now more than twenty years later, Rutherford is still worried about this incident. He always believes that it was the xenophobic sentiment of the Cavendish Laboratory that bullied him as a foreigner and prevented him from obtaining a teaching position in Cambridge. .
However, at McGill University, Rutherford was a blessing in disguise. He gathered a group of dynamic collaborators and students and carried out many creative scientific researches.
Several names mentioned by Chen Muwu at the beginning of the paper, Arthur Ive, David Florence and Joseph Gray, were all Rutherford's partners during his time on the other side of the ocean.
He also knew more or less about the research of these people, including the issue of gamma ray scattering.
From the discovery of the softening of scattered gamma rays by Ive in 1904 to 1913 when Gray redid the experiment and obtained accurate results, although Rutherford left Canada and came to teach at the University of Manchester, he has been paying attention to this issue. The correspondence between the experiment, and McGill University was never interrupted.
The experimental facts are clearly before physicists, but they can't find a correct explanation.
This Chinese paper sent by Eddington actually provides a theoretical explanation for this unsolved physics case?
Rutherford read on eagerly.
The paper is not long and the theoretical knowledge is not complex.
Although Chen Muwu also considered the relativistic effect, the relativistic effect of low-energy free electrons is not obvious and can be completely ignored.
After reading the end of the paper, Rutherford was a little moved.
The reason is not that the Chinese attached the experiment he designed at the end for readers' reference.
But Chen Muwu bluntly said that China did not have the experimental conditions and could only ask physicists from all over the world to help verify this.
This made Rutherford a little sad, because he had also experienced poverty when he was young.
Rutherford was born in New Zealand and has many brothers and sisters. His father is a worker and his mother is a primary school teacher. It is already difficult to support a large family with a meager salary and cannot afford to send each child to school.
Rutherford's life trajectory was originally supposed to be a New Zealand farmer, but a scholarship he received at the age of twenty-four changed his destiny.
It is said that when he heard the news, Rutherford was digging potatoes in the field. He happily threw the shovel on the ground and shouted: "This is the last potato I will dig in this life!"
From the news in the newspapers, Rutherford knew that China was a poor country.
He saw the shadow of himself in this paper sent across the ocean and in this Chinese man.
There was no reason why he should not lend a helping hand to this sensitive and studious young man who was in trouble.
Rutherford walked out of his office with the paper and found his student and assistant Richard Wick: "James, I need you to clear out an empty room as soon as possible. We have a new experiment to do."
"Yes, Director!"
