1900: A physics genius wandering around Europe

Chapter 198 The Tragedy of Physicists: Fragile Geniuses

Starting from May 1906, Li Qiwei received several letters, which made him feel very depressed.

These letters were all sent by his mentor Planck.

Since he returned to his country, he has often communicated with Planck through letters.

He told Planck about various things happening in his country, and Planck told him about the current developments in the European physics community.

Plank hopes that Li Qiwei will not be hindered by the lack of information in the country.

In this era, although newspapers and telegraphs can spread information around the world, it is all popular knowledge.

The details in cutting-edge research in physics cannot be covered in newspapers.

Some seemingly unrelated things actually played a role in the development of physics.

On May 5, Planck said in a letter that Mr. Curie, the 18 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, had unfortunately died in a carriage accident a month ago at the age of 1903.

Li Qiwei was filled with emotion. Mr. Curie still did not deviate from his original trajectory, but he was powerless to do anything.

I guess this is the inertia of history.

Li Qiwei couldn't tell him in advance and ask the other party to pay attention to safety, as that would cause unnecessary trouble.

Even his eldest brother Li Bokai could discover my clues. If he were too "prophetic", he would probably be taken away for sliced-up research immediately.

No matter how great Li Qiwei's achievements in physics are, they can all be explained by his genius.

But this kind of prediction of the future is really creepy.

This world is not a world of fighting magic, but a scientific world like the previous life.

Those big guys in power are not ignorant. They know more than Li Qiwei imagined.

Therefore, Li Qiwei has always been careful to hide himself and dare not be complacent.

But Li Qiwei thought of Xu Qitai's father Xu Yin. Why could the other party change the fate of being bombed?

He was in the UK and had never even met Xu Yin, let alone exert any influence on him.

The only variable may be Xu Qitai.

Li Qiwei speculated that the more interactions others might have with himself, the more he could influence their fate.

As a core member of his team, Xu Qitai's fate had already taken another path, which naturally affected his father and turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Of course, if it is the natural law of birth, aging, sickness and death, Li Qiwei cannot interfere.

Planck's second letter said that Lord Kelvin suddenly caught a severe cold and his health deteriorated rapidly.

Currently bedridden.

Ridgway sighed deeply. If nothing unexpected happened, Lord Kelvin would die in December next year.

The first big shot that Li Qiwei met when he came to this world.

Lord Kelvin and Ridgway staged a clichéd, yet bonding, show-off-your-face plot.

Thinking about it now, Li Qiwei still finds it funny.

Without the other party’s two dark clouds speech, his own quantum theory would have lost its best research background.

My own rise would not be so smooth.

Besides, Lord Kelvin also advocated for himself to become a British knight.

It can be said that his apology and compensation to Li Qiwei far exceeded the insult of that meeting.

Moreover, it was that bet that made Li Qiwei realize that these top physicists are also human beings and they also have their own fragile side.

For example, Lord Kelvin was also biased and believed that in terms of science, Asia was backward and Europe was advanced.

He is not perfect like a saint who loves the whole world.

He only loved people he admired. When Roentgen sent the paper on the discovery of X-rays to Lord Kelvin, he did not reply to Roentgen and did not care about him at all.

It is these shortcomings that make Lord Kelvin more three-dimensional. In Li Qiwei's eyes, the other party is not an NPC, but a living person with his own joys and sorrows.

For example, Thomson advised people to marry late, Einstein fell in love with someone else, etc.

As long as they are not the kind of physicists who are anti-human, anti-world, and evil in heart, Li Qiwei can accept them.

After all, he already has two wives and he has no face to look down on others.

However, some top physicists may be inferior to ordinary people in some aspects.

On July 7, Planck's third letter brought another sad news.

Boltzmann, a giant in thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, committed suicide by hanging himself while on vacation in Italy at the age of 62.

Planck mentioned that Boltzmann also attempted suicide in 1900, but failed.

Ridgway knew that Boltzmann was actually ill, and based on his symptoms in his later years, he might have suffered from a mental illness.

This disease was later called bipolar disorder.

Outsiders may not understand why Boltzmann, as a physics giant with great success and fame, would be so depressed.

In fact, it was because he cared too much about physics that he got this disease.

Because Boltzmann had debated with Ostwald, Mach and others about the nature of atoms more than ten years ago.

Boltzmann believed that atoms existed, but the other two believed that they did not exist and that everything was energy.
Ostwald was the 1909 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry and the founder of physical chemistry.

Mach was not only a physicist, but also a psychologist and philosopher.

If Boltzmann argued with them, he would definitely not win, and he would even suffer from depression.

Although atomic theory has now been proven to be correct, so what? One can never regain one's health.

Physicists are also human beings, and academic debates among physicists are similar to quarrels among ordinary people.

People who are not good at arguing often feel very upset afterwards, hating themselves for not saying this or doing that at the time, otherwise they would have definitely won the argument.

Then I kept reviewing the situation in my mind, wasting time and energy, and eventually I got sick. It was a typical case of one argument and two losses.

The most incredible thing is that Boltzmann had a student named Ehrenfest, who was also an outstanding physicist and inherited his teacher Boltzmann's research on statistical mechanics.

However, he also shot himself in 1933.

The reason for the subsequent analysis was also related to his depression, but it is unknown what caused him to be depressed.

After reading Planck's three letters, Li Qiwei almost became depressed.

No field is as glamorous as it appears.

There is dirty insider trading on the back side of politics.

Behind business is the bloody accumulation of capital.

Behind the art is decades of persistence and sweat.

There are also unknown sad stories behind physics.

Li Qiwei himself didn't care, he already had a big enough goal in mind.

Before his goal is achieved, he should not be confused or depressed.

However, he was a little worried about He Yujie and the other two.

In the past few years, the three of them have been busy, either studying or teaching, and have very little time for themselves.