1900: A physics genius wandering around Europe

Chapter 207: Visit to Berlin University; Einstein strikes again
On March 1909, 3, at the invitation of Planck, Ridgway went to the University of Berlin for an academic visit in the name of professor of physics at King's College London.

After returning to Europe, Li Qiwei had not yet gone to meet Planck.

Planck only extended the invitation after he knew that his disciple had dealt with everything properly.

The reason why we didn't invite them individually in private but instead invited them in the name of the school was to make it easier for Li Qiwei to get reimbursement.

After all, this is a formal academic exchange activity and a normal business trip. Not only will the food and accommodation expenses be reimbursed, but there will also be subsidies.

It can be seen from this how much Planck loved his disciples.

Just because a physicist is famous doesn't mean he is necessarily rich.

Just think about what kind of life Einstein had before and you will understand.

As the head of the Department of Physics at the University of Berlin, Planck's annual salary was only 8000 marks, about 400 pounds.

At that time, a skilled industrial worker in the UK earned about 100 pounds a year.

So, save wherever you can.

Not everyone is as wealthy as Li Qiwei and owns so many companies.

Ridgway took several professors including Bakla to the University of Berlin, where they were warmly received by Planck.

Planck was very happy that the master and the apprentice had not seen each other for six years. He joked:

"Bruce, you finally decided to come back."

"If I had known that you were going to take up the position, I would have gone to England to find you in person. I would have brought you to Germany anyway."

"You can choose any university or position in Germany."

"It seems that your professor Thomson is too stingy. He is even reluctant to give you the position of director of the Cavendish Laboratory."

Li Qiwei didn't know whether to laugh or cry, and the people around him laughed at Planck's words.

Everyone knows that Planck was a joke, but it also perfectly reflects Li Qiwei's status.

Even though he has not made any new achievements in six years, he is still a senior physicist.

The physics community's current positioning of Li Qiwei is very delicate.

According to the classification he gave, Thomson, Rutherford and others were undoubtedly senior physicists.

However, no one can say for sure whether Ridgway's quantum theory and special relativity will become a theory comparable to Newton's mechanics and Maxwell's electromagnetism.

If so, then Li Qiwei is a well-deserved top physicist, and may even become a great physicist in the future.

But if not, then his position is rather awkward.

Although the special theory of relativity is famous all over the world, it still has great flaws.

However, Ridgway's general theory of relativity, which made up for the shortcomings, has not yet been released, so it is difficult to judge.

Although quantum theory has been perfectly proven, it currently only has two application scenarios: blackbody radiation and photoelectric effect.

No matter how you look at it, it is not as universal as Newtonian mechanics and Maxwell electromagnetism.

Therefore, its status has been questioned by many.

But no matter what, special relativity and quantum theory are the two theories with the greatest potential in physics today.

Taking various factors into consideration, after Li Qiwei returned to China, the physics community conducted an in-depth analysis and judgment of his positioning.

In the end, it was unanimously agreed that Li Qiwei should be considered the first senior physicist.

This is also a very high evaluation.

Li Qiwei didn't care too much about this.

His so-called rank of physicists is all about raising the profile of physics.

Because in the eyes of ordinary laymen, Wilson, Buckley and Ridgway are all physicists and there is no difference between them.

Only insiders know how big the gap between them is.

Since Li Qiwei wants to elevate the status of scientists in this world, he must divide them into levels.

Let everyone know the gap between top physicists and ordinary physicists.

There is nothing so-called hurtful to one's self-esteem.

Physicists are not ordinary people. If they are not as skilled as others, they will not be jealous. Instead, they will study silently and perhaps surpass their opponents in the future.

Facing the complaints from his mentor Planck, Li Qiwei could only smile and say, "I want to come to Germany, too."

"But I'm afraid the British government will catch me as soon as I take the first step."

Li Qiwei's humorous words made the atmosphere even more lively.

Next, physics professors from the two schools organized a salon to discuss academic topics.

At this time, Planck brought a middle-aged man in his forties and introduced him: "This is Professor Nernst, the director of the Second Institute of Chemistry at the University of Berlin."

As soon as the words fell, several professors at King's College exclaimed.

Even Li Qiwei looked at the other party. Of course he knew the famous Nernst.

Although he had met the other party several times, they had never spoken.

In real history, Solvay was able to invite so many physicists because he knew Nernst and relied on him.

Bakla asked in surprise, "Are you Professor Nernst who proposed the third law of thermodynamics in 1906?"

Nernst smiled slightly and said, "That's me."

Li Qiwei sighed inwardly that it seemed that he had missed a lot of good things when he returned to China this time.

Although Nernst's third law of thermodynamics eventually won him the 1920 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, its impact on physics is also extremely important.

The third law of thermodynamics states that absolute zero cannot be reached but can only be approached finitely.

There are also many interesting stories about this law in later generations.

For example, in popular online articles, authors often write -500 degrees Celsius, which means extremely cold, colder than absolute zero. It was the first time for Bakla to meet so many physics masters, and he was very excited for a while.

He said to himself: "After the publication of the third law of thermodynamics, the three laws govern thermodynamics, just as the three laws of Newtonian mechanics govern mechanics."

“What a great achievement.”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Li Qiwei smiled slightly. He knew that there was still a zeroth law of thermodynamics that had not been published.

Its proposer was Rutherford's future son-in-law, British physicist Fowler.

However, the zeroth law is more like a foundation and a patch, and does not have much impact on current thermodynamics research.

Nernst was overwhelmed by Bakla's enthusiasm, so he also asked about Bakla's situation.

"Oh, you are the Buckara who had a public dispute with Henry Bragg."

"Your research is also very interesting. Professor Roentgen is very interested in you."

"I thought you could go visit him."

Bakla was very excited after hearing this, as this was a rare opportunity.

He looked at Ridgeway, who nodded at him.

Anyway, it’s easy to drop by the University of Munich.

Then, the atmosphere became even more heated.

Everyone present here is a senior figure in the field of physics, and the topics discussed are the most cutting-edge and popular ones at the moment.

Just when Ridgway took Bakla to visit Roentgen, a paper was published in Nature magazine on March 3, which instantly caused a sensation.

The author of the article is Albert Einstein, an associate professor of physics at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

This emerging physicist has been in the limelight in recent years, publishing several blockbuster papers in succession.

People's understanding of him has long gotten rid of the stereotype of "Einstein who published the theory of special relativity with Bruce."

Instead, he is called a young physicist.

This paper is about the quantum theory of specific heats of solids.

Heat capacity is a physical quantity in thermodynamics, which indicates the energy required for a substance to increase in temperature by one unit.

The heat capacity of a solid consists of two parts: one part comes from lattice vibration, called lattice heat capacity; the other part comes from electron movement, called electron heat capacity.

The electron heat capacity is only 1% of the lattice heat capacity at room temperature, so it is usually negligible.

In his paper, Einstein used quantum theory to explain the experimental fact that the heat capacity of solids decreases with temperature.

He believed that the energy of atomic vibrations was also quantized, successfully explaining the nature of the heat capacity of solids.

This is a great application of quantum theory in the field of thermodynamics.

At the same time, this paper also proves that the potential of quantum theory has not been fully tapped.

For a time, Einstein became famous.

Li Qiwei was also pushed to the forefront.

Bruce, the founder of quantum theory, has not produced any results for six years.

However, the previously unknown Einstein caught up, became more and more powerful, and made a sensation in the world of physics.

At the same time, more and more people are studying quantum theory.

Everyone wants to see how far this theory can be developed.

Li Qiwei only learned the news after returning to Britain from Germany.

In real history, Einstein published this paper in 1906.

The god of love is so terrifying.

Even without the theory of relativity, photoelectric effect, and mass-energy equation, he still beats countless physicists.

Ridgway wrote to Einstein, congratulating him on another paper and saying that he would visit him soon.

Einstein's paper was like a flame that completely ignited the sky of physics.

Immediately afterwards, Lang Zhiwan, a professor of physics at the Collège de France, published a paper on Brownian motion following his 1905 paper on paramagnetism and diamagnetism.

Based on Einstein's theory, he developed the fluctuation theory and successfully proved that Einstein was correct.

Not long after, Perrin, a physics professor at the University of Paris, France, successfully confirmed Einstein's Brownian motion equation through experiments.

At this point, the existence of atoms has been thoroughly proven and there is no doubt about it.

At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Millikan, a physics professor at the University of Chicago, used the oil drop method to accurately measure the charge of an electron.

This result has a significant impact on atomic research.

On April 4, Buechler and others in Germany used experiments to prove that the mass of an electron changes with its speed.

This experimental phenomenon once again made the special theory of relativity popular.

Although their experiment was crude, it was shocking enough.

Only a few months after Ridgway returned to England, there seemed to be an explosion of research in physics.

Quantum theory and special relativity are once again active in the field of physics.

Not only did everyone have doubts, but Li Qiwei, the founder of the theory, also stopped working on it without any significant results.

Is he really going to be surpassed by others?

Many people think of an old Eastern saying: Physics research is really like rowing against the current, if you don't move forward you will fall behind.

(End of this chapter)