The recipient of this telegram from Copenhagen was actually not Chen Muwu, but Rutherford.
The person who sent the telegram was naturally Bohr, the director of the Institute of Theoretical Physics. He said in the telegram that he would set off in the near future, taking a ship from Copenhagen to the Port of Norwich in the United Kingdom, and then taking a train to attend a meeting of the Royal Society in London.
He asked his teacher Rutherford to go to London to meet him, and specifically mentioned in the telegram that his smartest junior brother, Chen Muwu, must also come with the teacher.
So as soon as Chen Muwu returned to Cambridge University from Paris and returned to the Cavendish Laboratory, Rutherford asked Chadwick to call him to his office and show him the telegram.
Bohr went to a meeting at the Royal Academy, which was both unexpected and unsurprising.
Not surprisingly, the Royal Academy announced last year the list of newly admitted members in early 1926.
Bohr and Planck are both on the list and will become foreign fellows of the Royal Academy.
It may seem strange that Bohr and Planck achieved fame in physics much earlier than Chen Muwu.
But why did they not become fellows of the Royal Society until 1926?
This is one year later than Chen Muwu, who became a fellow last year!
The composition of Royal Society members is divided into three situations.
One is the formal member, which is commonly known as FRS, Fellowship of the Royal Society.
The other type is foreign members like Bohr, ForMemRS, Foreign member of Royal Society.
The last one is Honorary Fellowship HonFRS, Honorary Fellowship of Royal Society.
These three titles will be awarded to different groups of people.
Honorary Fellow is exactly like the word in the name, it is purely an honorary title.
The recipient can be regarded as having made certain contributions to scientific research, but the achievements are not enough to be awarded a fellow or a foreign fellow.
As for fellows and foreign fellows, they are all people who have made sufficient achievements in scientific research.
The difference between the two is that the nationality of the foreign members and the location of their major achievements are not within the United Kingdom and its overseas colonies.
Although Chen Muwu is Chinese, his research results in physics and astronomy were all conducted in the UK, so he can obtain the title of fellow, not a foreign fellow.
This can be regarded as a kind of recognition of him by the British academic community, which means that you are one of our own.
The same will be true for Kapitsa in the future, even if he is a Surian.
In fact, foreign fellow of the Royal Society is more like an honorary title. Scholars who have received this title do not need to go to London to participate in the induction ceremony in person.
Although Planck is two years younger than Thomson, he is already 68 years old this year.
At his age, he would definitely not take a train from Berlin to Calais, France, and then transfer to the UK by ship.
Chen Muwu originally thought that Bohr, like Planck, would not come to London to attend the initiation ceremony.
But I didn't expect the telegram to say that he would come in person, which was surprising.
Bohr last visited Britain in 1923.
At that time, he was very popular. The building of the Institute of Theoretical Physics had just been completed. At the end of the previous year, he won the 1922 Nobel Prize in Physics.
During that visit to the UK, Bohr met his teachers, classmates and colleagues in the UK, and received two honorary doctorates from the Victoria University of Manchester and the University of Cambridge.
After that, Bohr has been busy with various things at his Institute of Theoretical Physics: buying land, expanding it, focusing on the construction of the new building, etc.
Basically, he has never left Denmark in the past few years. During this period, he only visited Stockholm, the capital of neighboring Sweden.
This was because he could do everything possible to persuade Chen Muwu to stay in Copenhagen and accompany him to receive a Nobel Prize.
Bohr did not attend the 1924 Solvay Conference, so he had not seen his teacher Rutherford for almost three years.
So Bohr chose to attend the induction ceremony for foreign members of the Royal Society held in London, and also wanted to go to the UK to meet his teachers and classmates.
Of course, he would also swing the hoe a few more times to see if he could dig his junior brother Chen Muwu to Copenhagen.
This young man was a little unreasonable. I had obviously asked him before if he thought physics would make progress in superconductivity at low temperatures in the future. Otherwise, why would he send that foreign student to Leiden University in the Netherlands?
Chen Muwu vowed at the time that there might be some progress in low-temperature physics, but the mainstream was definitely still in the quantum aspect.
As a result, after he returned to the UK, he published three papers in a row, all of which were results obtained in low-temperature physics experiments.
Bohr didn't understand why Chen Muwu would lie to him, a loyal elder.
From the time when Manchester followed Rutherford, he did not do many experiments on his own, but served as Rutherford's theoretical consultant.
Bohr hasn't done any experiments for more than ten years. Is it possible that Chen Muwu was still afraid that he would steal his results, so he deliberately lied?
If that's the case, there's another point that doesn't make sense.
Since what Chen Muwu and himself said about low-temperature physics having no prospects was a lie, then what he and himself, Yoshio Nishina, said should be the truth.
Because after listening to what he said, Yoshio Nishina transferred from Denmark to the Netherlands and devoted himself to the research of low-temperature physics.
But didn’t Chen Muwu say that he hated himself?
Could this sentence also be a lie to deceive myself?
Bohr thought in his mind that during this meeting, in addition to continuing to poach Chen Muwu, he also wanted to ask him why he lied to him.
Bohr asked him to go by himself, but Chen Muwu had to go.
He could not blame Bohr for being unreasonable. A telegram made Rutherford, who was already so old, go to London.
Because Rutherford was originally the president of the Royal Society, anyone could not participate in this kind of plenary meeting convened by the Royal Society, but he was the only one who could not.
So Chen Muwu, who had just returned to the Cavendish Laboratory, took a train to London with Rutherford and other fellows after resting for a few days at Cambridge University.
Although this railway line from Cambridgeshire to London is only a branch line outside the main line of British railways, it often becomes the most intelligent railway line in the world at certain moments.
Just sitting with these professors whose average age was more than twice his own, Chen Muwu really couldn't find anything in common with them.
He even began to miss the days when he and Kapitsa took the train together a few days ago.
Listening to him talk endlessly about the love story between himself and Anna was better than enjoying the smell of tobacco in the first-class carriage.
His teacher would occasionally point the finger at him and make fun of him.
Rutherford also knew that Chen Muwu went to Paris, France during his vacation. It was self-evident who he was looking for there.
He always remembered what he said about being a witness to Chen Muwu on the train back to Cambridge from Liverpool last year.
Now he was also riding a train, so Rutherford brought it up again and joked about it.
After several hours of suffering, we finally arrived in London.
Chen Muwu refused the invitation to stay at a place prepared by the society with others, but went to the British Legation as usual.
The embassy is made of iron, Zhu Zhaoxin is made of iron.
Since being promoted to Minister to Italy last year, Zhu Zhaoxin has been preparing for her appointment.
From then on, every time they met, they thought it was the last time they would see each other in England.
As a result, during this year, we saw him for the last time at least three times.
Without any accident, Zhu Zhaoxin still stayed in London.
There are no surprises either, this is indeed the last time in the UK.
News finally came from the country. The new minister to the UK has been confirmed. He will only wait until after the Spring Festival to leave the country and come to the UK to take up his post.
Although on the list given by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the new minister is Yan Huiqing, who once served as prime minister.
But Zhu Zhaoxin told Chen Muwu not to have high hopes.
He had been the charge d'affaires in the UK for five or six years, and the nominal minister to the UK was always Gu Weijun. However, the time that Minister Gu had been in the UK to perform his duties was only a few months in total.
Zhu Zhaoxin estimates that former Prime Minister Yan will not stay in the UK for long.
Maybe he won't come at all, and will only send another counselor or first secretary to continue to act as temporary agent to handle errands.
This is actually good news for Chen Muwu. The lower the status of the "hunter on behalf of the sky" in the UK, the better he can do things cheaply.
…
Welcome new members to the Society and award various medals and medals affiliated with the Royal Society to those who have made achievements in the past year.
Chen Muwu had long foreseen how boring this meeting would be. Although Bohr appeared at the meeting on the last day, the two of them only said hello briefly.
"Professor Bohr, congratulations on becoming a foreign member of the Royal Society!"
"Oh, Dr. Chen, long time no see. You have achieved so many achievements in the past year. It's really enviable."
After the pleasantries, Bohr did not continue his heart-to-heart talk with Chen Muwu, and he was not in a hurry to start swinging the hoe at this moment.
After attending the ceremony of the Royal Society in London, Bohr would stay at the University of Cambridge for a few days, give lectures, visit laboratories, and exchange experiences with his physics colleagues.
By then, there will be plenty of time between the two of them.
But for Chen Muwu, this trip to London was not only a waste of time, but also not completely fruitless.
On January 26, the day after the meeting, Rutherford invited several fellows of the Royal Society, including two of his good students, Chen Muwu and Bohr, who came from afar, to Soho, London ( Visit to a laboratory at 22 Frith Street, Soho.
When he first heard that it was a laboratory, or a laboratory built in a wealthy area, Chen Muwu thought it was probably the rich man in London who was bored and wanted to study science on a whim.
He was able to make this speculation not entirely out of hatred for the rich, but because in addition to fellows of the Royal Society, he was also accompanied by reporters and photographers from The Times.
Only bored rich people would start such a big fight.
But when he arrived, he realized that his previous guess was completely wrong. There was really something new in this laboratory.
Scotsman John Baird, the owner of the laboratory, was also the first person in the world to invent television.
As early as March 25 last year, he had already conducted a three-week public demonstration at Selfridges department store, using the TV system he invented to show people moving silhouettes.
This time, through The Times, he invited fellows of the Royal Society to visit the laboratory and testify, to confirm that he had indeed invented a novel device that could transmit moving images in real time.
When the power switch is turned on, a disc with many holes begins to rotate. The light bulb behind the rotating disc is continuously blocked and released. The light passing through the holes flickers on and off, illuminating Baird's assistant Oliver Ha. Chinsen's face, the reflected light is then captured by a device and converted into electrical signals.
After these electrical signals were transmitted and a series of reverse operations were performed, Mr. Hutchinson's face was finally displayed on Baird's TV.
The photographer of The Times pressed the shutter of the camera, and the world's first television image was recorded on the photographic film.
Chen Muwu was not very interested in the TV invented by Baird.
Because mechanical scanning TVs like this will be eliminated in a few years.
Electronically scanned TVs will be the mainstream of future TV development, and this is the type that will eliminate mechanical ones.
However, Chen Muwu's trip was worthwhile. He received two inspirations from this laboratory visit.
The first concerns the electron microscopy project that had been shelved at the Cavendish Laboratory.
One thing that Chen Muwu had not figured out before was how to concretely present the results of electron microscope observations.
The solution he thought of at the time was to put a developing film inside every time a sample was observed, and record the final result of the observation through photography.
However, now that there is a TV, you can also directly transfer the electron microscope observation results into electrical signals, and then install an additional fluorescent display screen, so that you can observe the microscopic results without frequently changing the film.
In the 1920s, it was undoubtedly very advanced to be able to use this technology on electron microscopes.
As for the second point of inspiration, Chen Muwu overheard it when Baird was interviewed by The Times after the demonstration.
He told reporters about the arduous process of developing televisions, saying that he had been exposed to voltages as high as one thousand volts in an experiment.
Although no one was killed in this accident, it still deformed his hand and left him disabled, and he was kicked out by his landlord.
Baird continued to remember the bitterness and sweetness there, but Chen Muwu's thoughts had long been on high-voltage electricity.
Now his group at the Cavendish Laboratory is also studying things related to high pressure.
This high voltage can not only accelerate particles and smash atoms, but can also electrocute people.
In order to prevent this situation, the environment around the generator must be insulated.
This is an oversight that I have never noticed before, and this oversight is still life-threatening!
Fortunately, the materials for the generator have not been fully prepared, and formal construction has not started.
The prison has not been broken yet, and the sheep have not died. There is no need to mend it, as long as it is reinforced in advance.
If someone really loses his life because he ignored this, that would be a real big trouble!
(End of chapter)
