Chapter 15 Submission to "Nature"
May 5, 1900, London, "Nature" magazine.
Sir Lockyer, who is 64 years old, came to the office as usual.
Although he is the editor-in-chief and founder of Nature magazine, Sir Lockyer still insists on being the first to arrive at the company every day.
The assistant Mary carefully helped him make a cup of strong coffee, which was full of mellow flavor.
This is a review habit that Sir Lockyer has developed over the years. Coffee helps him stay focused and improve his thinking ability.
In his words, it allows the brain to function effectively and live younger.
Science magazines are different from celebrity gossip magazines and require extremely high professionalism and insight.
If you make a stupid mistake, it will be a devastating blow to the magazine.
Mary had put together the first drafts of all the editors and put them on the table in the office, and then she sat in the seat next to them.
As an assistant, she needs to stay by Sir Lockyer's side at all times to take care of and convey instructions.
Sir Lockyer took a sip of coffee, showed an expression of enjoyment, then began to look through the manuscript, and asked casually:
"Mary, have the boys below discovered anything new? "
"Our magazine urgently needs to publish some major research results."
Sir Lockyer is also very helpless. With the explosion of science, exciting results are released every day.
This has also led to the mushrooming of various scientific magazines and fierce competition in the market.
Although "Nature" is the leader among them, it also faces tremendous pressure from its peers.
But even under such circumstances, Sir Lockyer still maintained high standards and strictness for the magazine.
Only high-quality papers and research in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy and other fields are collected.
We will never include or publish some messy papers to make up for the lack of information.
This also led to "Nature" becoming a weekly magazine. Compared with other daily magazines, its circulation was small and its revenue also decreased.
Although he himself is not short of money, as his own hard work, he hopes that "Nature" can flourish and become famous all over the world.
No matter how bad it is, let the young editors who follow you have a good salary.
Just when Sir Lockyer expressed his thoughts, Mary said softly:
"Sir, I really have something to report to you."
"Gregory received a paper submission, which was about physics, but he couldn't understand it and wanted you to check it."
"So, I marked the manuscript separately and put it in You can see it later.”
Hearing this, Sir Lockyer was slightly surprised and said with a smile:
“Oh, what other paper can stump us in London. A top student at King’s College?”
“Then let me read this profound paper first”
After that, Sir Lockyer found the paper from a pile of manuscripts.
When I opened it, the first thing that caught my eye was the title of the paper: "Thoughts on the use of quantum theory to explain the problem of black body radiation"
Oops!
Sir Lockyer smiled softly, in such a loud tone, that he was going to challenge the second dark cloud issue.
Although he is just an astronomer himself, he also has certain involvement and research in other scientific fields.
Of course I know the two dark clouds problem raised by Lord Kelvin.
"But what does this 'quantum' mean?" Sir Lockyer murmured to himself.
Then I looked down and found two people next to the author’s name.
The strange thing is that one of them is the corresponding author.
As the editor-in-chief of a well-known scientific magazine, he had never heard of this statement.
Fortunately, the explanation is thoughtfully given below the name.
After reading this, Sir Lockyer actually admired the author for coming up with such a method.
The invention of the corresponding author effectively solves the conflicts between tutors and students in their papers.
The student is the first author and is responsible for writing the original paper; the tutor is the corresponding author and is responsible for providing guidance on the paper.
Both of them contributed to the results of the paper, and they are distinct from each other.
But when Sir Lockyer saw the two names clearly, his expression changed drastically, and he couldn't help but exclaimed:
"Bruce Lee? Plank?"
"Is it with Sir Kelvin? That kid from the Qing Dynasty who made the bet? "
"Oh my god, he really wants to prove himself with a paper?"
"How did Professor Planck become the corresponding author?" Mary on the side saw Sir Lockyer so excited, and quickly stood up and asked what was wrong.
Sir Lockyer didn't look at her, just waved his hand, and then said:
"Mary, make me another cup of coffee, stronger, as soon as possible."
After saying that, he began to read the paper word for word, and the only sound in the room was Mary's footsteps.
After reading the explanation of the concept of [quantum] in the paper, Sir Lockyer was extremely shocked.
"Oh, my God, what an incredible hypothesis is this?"
"This is simply challenging the authority of Newtonian mechanics!"
Sir Lockyer kept talking. The ground groaned, but there was an inexplicable flush on his face.
He had a hunch that this paper would definitely set off a huge storm in physics.
"Nature" magazine is likely to become famous with this paper!
At this time, Mary came in with coffee.
She looked at Sir Lockyer and muttered to himself as if he had lost his soul.
I didn’t even know the coffee was coming.
So she put down the coffee gently and walked away.
Thinking to myself, it seems that Gregory has sent a very powerful paper.
At this time, Sir Lockyer was completely attracted by Ridgway's paper and even forgot to drink coffee.
When he read [Lee Planck's Radiation Formula], he couldn't help but slap the table.
“It’s so perfect!”
“It’s as fascinating as Newton’s second law.”
“It actually proved energy quantization theoretically and perfectly Explained the problem of black body radiation ”
"It is simply amazing talent and unbridled imagination."
Sir Lockyer exclaimed repeatedly, and at the same time, he really couldn't believe that the author of this paper was actually a Qing Dynasty, and he was still a young man.
At the same time, he thought of another tangled problem.
Should this paper be published?
First of all, quantum theory completely rejects the classical continuous Newtonian view of space and time, which is groundbreaking.
However, it is only a theory after all and cannot be verified experimentally.
At the very least, there needs to be another strong evidence (that is, the photoelectric effect).
In case it is published, this theory will eventually be proven to be wrong.
Then the wisdom of Sir Lockyer will be ruined.
"Nature" magazine will also suffer. This is the magazine that published dozens of Darwin's papers.
It is a sacred place for submission among young scientists and cannot be missed.
Secondly, Li Qiwei’s Qing background also gave Sir Lockyer a headache.
Although "Nature" once published a paper by a Qing scholar, it was about acoustics.
It is not very theoretical and belongs to applied level physics research.
Far inferior to this quantum theory.
If such an epoch-making paper was published by Nature and readers found out that the author was from the Qing Dynasty, I don’t know what they would think.
Is there no one in Europe?
This may have a bad impact on the reputation of "Nature".
But fortunately, with Planck as the corresponding author, at least it can be said.
Although the other party is German, it still belongs to Europe. At least it proves that white people are still civilized and noble.
So Sir Lockyer made up his mind.
Receive this paper!
But before that, he had to contact several friends in the industry and in the field of physics.
Because before the paper is published, the editor needs to select other scientists who are prestigious in the same field but have nothing to do with the author to check and judge the content of the article.
Commonly known as "peer review" to ensure the accuracy of the paper.
Moreover, Sir Lockyer also wanted to see how others were shocked, so he said:
"Mary, help me plan some invitations. I want to contact some friends."
"Okay. Yes, sir," Mary replied.
Dear readers, please read, recommend, and collect. Thank you~
(End of this chapter)