Chapter 15 Submission to Nature
Nature magazine, London, May 1900, 5.
Sir Lockyer, who is 64 years old, came to the office as usual.
Although he was the editor-in-chief and founder of Nature magazine, Sir Lockyer still insisted on being the first to arrive at the company every day.
His assistant Mary carefully made him a cup of strong coffee, which was full of fragrance.
This is a reviewing habit that Sir Lockyer has developed over the years. Coffee helps him stay focused and improve his thinking ability.
In his words, it can make the brain function efficiently and make you younger as you grow older.
Scientific magazines are different from celebrity gossip magazines and require extremely high levels of professionalism and insight.
If a low-level mistake is made, it will be a devastating blow to the magazine.
Mary had already compiled all the editors' drafts and placed them on the desk in the office, and then she sat down at the seat next to them.
As an assistant, she needs to stay by Sir Lockyer's side at all times to take care of him and convey instructions.
Sir Lockyer took a sip of coffee, showing an expression of enjoyment, then began to look through the manuscript and asked casually:
"Mary, have the boys down there found anything new?"
"Our journal is in urgent need of publishing some blockbuster research results."
Sir Lockyer was also very helpless. Nowadays, there is a scientific explosion and exciting results are coming out every day.
This has also led to the emergence of various scientific magazines like mushrooms after a rain, and the market competition is fierce.
Although Nature is a leader among them, it also faces tremendous pressure from its peers.
However, even in this situation, 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, etc. are accepted.
We will never include or publish some messy papers to make up the numbers.
This also led to Nature becoming a weekly magazine. Compared with other daily magazines, its circulation was smaller and its revenue also decreased accordingly.
Although he himself was not short of money, he hoped that Nature, as his hard work, would prosper and become famous all over the world.
At the very least, at least he could ensure that the young editors who followed him had a good salary.
As Lord Lockyer was speaking, Mary whispered:
"Sir, there is something I need to report to you."
"Gregory received a paper submission about physics, but he couldn't understand it and wanted you to review it."
"So, I marked the manuscript separately and put it at the top, and you will be able to see it later."
Sir Lockyer was slightly surprised when he heard this and said with a smile:
"Oh, is there any other paper that can stump our top students at King's College London?"
"Then I'll read this advanced 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 using quantum theory to explain the problem of blackbody radiation"
Hey!
Sir Lockyer smiled lightly. What a big tone! He was going to challenge the second dark cloud problem.
Although he is only an astronomer, he also has some knowledge and research in other scientific fields.
Of course I know the two dark cloud problems raised by Lord Kelvin.
"But what does this 'quantum' mean?" Lord Lockyer muttered to himself.
Then I looked down and found two people under the author's name.
Oddly enough, 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, an explanation is given below the name.
After reading it, Sir Lockyer was actually a little impressed by the author for coming up with such an idea.
The invention of the corresponding author effectively resolved the conflicts between supervisors and students in papers.
The student is the first author and is responsible for writing the original paper, while the supervisor is the corresponding author and is responsible for guiding the paper.
Both of them made contributions to the results of the paper, and their contributions are clearly distinguished.
But when Sir Lockyer saw the two names clearly, his face changed drastically and he couldn't help but exclaimed loudly:
"Bruce Lee? Plank?"
"Could it be the Qing boy who made a bet with Sir Kelvin?"
"Oh my god, he really wants to prove himself with a thesis?"
"But how come Professor Planck became the corresponding author?" Mary, who was standing by, saw Sir Lockyer so excited and quickly stood up to ask what was going on.
Lord Lockyer did not look at her, but waved his hand, and continued:
"Mary, make me another cup of coffee, stronger, as soon as possible."
After that, he began to read the paper word by 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 shocked beyond words.
"Oh my God, what an incredible assumption?"
"This is simply challenging the authority of Newtonian mechanics!"
Sir Lockyer kept mumbling something, but there was an inexplicable blush on his face.
He had a hunch that this paper would definitely cause a huge storm in physics.
Nature magazine may become famous thanks to this paper!
At this time, Mary came in with coffee.
She watched Lord Lockyer muttering to himself as if he were in a trance.
I didn't even know the coffee was coming.
So she gently put down her coffee and walked away.
I thought to myself, it seems that Gregory has sent a very impressive paper.
At this time, Sir Lockyer was so absorbed in Ridgway's paper that he even forgot to drink his coffee.
When he read the [Lee Planck Radiation Formula], he couldn't help but slap the table.
"so perfect!"
“It’s as fascinating as Newton’s second law.”
“It actually proved the quantization of energy theoretically and perfectly explained the problem of blackbody radiation.”
“It’s just a brilliant and unbridled imagination.”
Sir Lockyer exclaimed repeatedly and could not believe that the author of this paper was a Qing Chinese, and a young man at that.
At the same time, he thought of another thorny problem.
Should this paper be published?
First of all, quantum theory completely negates the classical continuous Newtonian view of space and time, which can be said to be a groundbreaking event.
However, it is only a theory after all and cannot be verified by experiments.
At the very least, we need another strong piece of evidence (the photoelectric effect).
What if this theory is proven to be wrong after being published?
Then Sir Lockyer's wisdom would be ruined.
Nature magazine would also suffer, as it is the magazine that published dozens of Darwin's papers.
It is a holy place for submission in the hearts of young scientists and must not be missed.
Secondly, Sir Lockyer also had a headache because of Ridgewell's Chinese background.
Although Nature once published a paper written by a Qing Dynasty scholar, it was about acoustics.
It is not very theoretical and belongs to applied-level physics research.
It is far inferior to this quantum theory.
I wonder what readers would think if such a groundbreaking paper was published in Nature and they found out that the author was from the Qing Dynasty.
Is there no one left in Europe?
This may have a negative impact on the reputation of Nature.
But fortunately, with Planck as the corresponding author, it at least makes sense.
Although the other party was German, he also belonged to Europe, which at least proved that white people were still civilized and noble.
So Sir Lockyer made up his mind.
Accept this paper!
But before that, he still needs to contact several friends in the industry and friends in the field of physics.
Because before a paper is published, the editor needs to select other prestigious scientists in the same field but unrelated to 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 the others being shocked, so he said:
"Mary, help me plan some invitations. I need to contact some friends."
"Yes, sir," Mary replied.
Please read, recommend and collect this book, thank you~
(End of this chapter)