The calm surface of Lake Michigan could not cure Compton's hysteria over having his papers withheld.
After hearing the call from his Chinese student Wu Youxun, Compton became even more irritable.
It has been more than a month since I came to Chicago. After spending this month together, Compton originally thought that this Chinese graduate student was a calm and honest good candidate and a good helper. He didn't know how he suddenly became so reckless. It's just a European physics journal. Is there such a fuss? It seems that it has never been seen on the market.
He turned around with a slightly unhappy look on his face, and Wu Youxun had already run to him holding the "Yearbook of Physics".
"Misto Wu, what is in this issue of the journal that makes you act like a different person and become so crazy?" Compton said dissatisfied.
"Professor, here is an article..."
"Misto Wu, can you read German? I can't understand it anyway. You should wait until the foreign language secretary in the department translates the paper and then show it to me."
Wu Youxun, who graduated from Tengjing Higher Normal School, can certainly read and understand German.
In fact, the vast majority of universities in China do not choose English as the main foreign language subject for teaching, but instead teach both English and German.
Of course, there are two types of people who choose to study French. One is the upper-class celebrities who admire the European aristocratic language, and the other is the lower-class educated youth who want to go to France for work-study studies.
These two very different classes have reached an agreement on the choice of language.
"Professor, Professor Compton!" Wu Youxun was so anxious that he couldn't speak clearly. He turned the magazine in his hand to a certain page and stubbornly put it in front of Compton, pointing at it with his outstretched finger. , "This article was recommended by Planck and Einstein. Please look at the formula derivation here and the schematic diagram here. This paper seems to have done the same work as us!"
Compton had no choice but to raise his eyelids and glance perfunctorily in the direction of his finger.
Then, he opened his eyes wide!
This, this, this, isn't this the theoretical basis of the paper I submitted to "Physical Review"?
Compton snatched the "Yearbook of Physics" from Wu Youxun's hand, sat on the bench and carefully "read" Chen Muwu's paper.
Although he said that he could not read German, as Wu Youxun said, he could understand the symbols and formulas of physics, as well as the schematic diagrams.
Compton's first reaction was, who secretly translated his paper into German, converted X-rays into gamma rays, and then submitted it to the "Annals of Physics"?
Then, his eyes fell on the author column below the title. Although the name above started with C, it was not Compton, but Chen Muwu.
Thanks to one of his Chinese graduate students, Compton was able to recognize the man whose name also seemed Chinese.
So his eyes moved away from the paper and fell on Wu Youxun again: "Is this your compatriot, Misto Wu? Do you recognize this person?"
"Professor, judging by his name, he must be Chinese too." Wu Youxun's tone contained a bit of national pride. He thought for a long time in his mind who this Chen was. He was a professor at his alma mater. Or a teacher from Beida University?
In the entire country, these two schools should be the only ones whose physics level is passable.
But in the end, he could only shake his head: "But unfortunately, I don't know this person."
"Look, which university is he from?"
Wu Youxun took the journal handed over by Compton and glanced at the author's mailing address: "Teach...Professor, this person's mailing address is not a university, but..."
"But what?"
"But a railroad administration in our country!"
"Railroad authority? An engineer? Oh, my God!"
How could a Chinese railway engineer have the same ideas as his own?
Could it be that he publicly presented the findings in his paper for the first time before Christmas last year at a lecture at Washington University in St. Louis, and then was stolen and published by this Chinese named Chen?
This idea of being too jealous was rejected by himself not long after he came up with it.
If there were really people who attended that lecture, they would have written the lecture content into a letter and sent it to China immediately after listening to the lecture. It would have taken at least a month on the road.
It would take more than a month for Chen to compile the contents into a paper and then send it from China to the editorial office in Europe.
The two together add up to more than two months. So unless this Chinese has some way to go back to the past, his paper will never be published in the "Annals of Physics" on January 20!
Then there is only one possibility left, that is, he was beaten first by Chen, who coincidentally coincided with him.
Compton felt a little ashamed. He thought that he must have been brainwashed by the Chinese Exclusion Act since he was a child for so long that he subconsciously thought that the Chinese named Chen was plagiarizing as soon as he learned the news. The academic thief of his own mind.
Compton's new graduate student, Wu Youxun, was the first Chinese person he had close contact with.
He is down-to-earth and hard-working, and has changed Compton's perception of the Chinese. He believes that his compatriots will not be as miserable as the newspapers and public opinion exaggerated.
Compton was also a little depressed at the same time. This kind of depression was as if he had dressed up carefully before going on a date with the most beautiful girl in town. However, when he got outside the girl's house, he found that she had already slept with him. A poor boy's broken carriage!
Wu Youxun, who read the paper word for word, seemed to have discovered some new information.
He once again said to the dejected Compton: "Professor, professor! This paper only proposes a theoretical explanation. It says that due to the lack of experimental conditions, he cannot conduct experimental verification of this new theory, so please express your gratitude." Interested experimentalists, design experiments to verify. It seems we still have a chance!"
Unlike Chen Muwu who was far away in China and could not even find a gamma ray source, the wealthy American upstarts invested huge sums of money in experimental research. The paper Compton submitted to the "Physical Review" It was after he returned from Cambridge that he came to the specific conclusion after several years of experiments and summarizing a large amount of data. The experimental data was not only reliable, but also extremely detailed.
Compton certainly understood the meaning of Wu Youxun's words. He understood that his graduate student wanted him to be the first to publish experimental data to remedy the situation and recover some of the losses suffered by others.
After all, in this era, experiments are still the mainstream of physics, and theory is just an explanation for experimental phenomena!
Compton paid his respects to Duane's ancestors who were far away in Boston. He said that Chen's theory, which coincided with mine, had been recognized by established European physics journals, but you were so stupid that you settled here. But I have been stuck on my thesis and will not let go.
Refreshed, he stood up from the bench and said to Wu Youxun beside him: "Let's go, Misto Wu, let's go back to school."
"Yes, Professor!"
