Early in the morning.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Professor Stanley was standing on the podium, giving a lecture to the undergraduate students as usual.
Ever since he lost to Lu Zhou in the "race" for lithium-sulfur battery electrode materials, he lost the support of ExxonMobil, left the industry, and returned to academia.
However, this was a blessing in disguise.
Because of their research on lithium batteries, he, Professor Goodnough, and Professor Akira Yoshino won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
After receiving this honor, Lu Zhou's academic career had been smooth sailing. Not only did ExxonMobil want to repair their relationship with him, but there were also a lot more students coming to his classes.
Of course, to be able to win this award, to a large extent, was due to luck.
If it weren't for the fact that lithium batteries had become more and more widely used in the past few years, even becoming the cornerstone of the new electrical era, the Nobel Prize Committee might not have considered their work so early.
Because of this, if it weren't for the fact that he had already won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, many people thought that Lu Zhou was more qualified to win this honor because of his research on lithium batteries.
It had been many years since that incident, and so many things had happened. Professor Stanley's view of Lu Zhou had changed drastically.
Science changed the world, mathematics changed science.
He admitted that his research philosophy was more or less influenced by that man.
Perhaps it was just like what his friend said, Lu Zhou's terrifying computing power left a deep impression on him. So much so that he had been studying computational materials science over the years, hoping to use computational materials science as a breakthrough point, and also as a breakthrough point to break through the bottleneck of modern materials science research …
"… Discovering, exploring phenomena, summarizing, and explaining principles, this is the process of creating knowledge, and it is also the essence of science.
"In traditional materials science research, most of the discoveries of new materials originated from accidental discoveries by researchers, or the results of countless repeated attempts. It's obvious that there's a great deal of blindness in this. It wasn't until the emergence of modern computers that people summarized a variety of empirical models based on experimental results that the design of experiments changed from empirical fumbling to rational design. Only then did this discipline truly become a 'science' in the true sense. "
"Yes, before this, I didn't think of materials science as a science. It was more like a 'craft' for engineers. Your homework for today is to write a summary paper around the density functional theory that I talked about in class. "
"Class dismissed."
After Professor Stanley announced the end of the class, he put away his textbooks and walked back to his office. Just as he threw the lesson plan on his desk and was about to check his email, his student and assistant, Dr. Jones, who was sitting in his office, suddenly stood up and walked toward him with a stack of printed papers.
"Professor, I want to show you something."
Professor Stanley noticed the strange expression on his student's face. He raised his eyebrows and put on his glasses.
"What is it?"
"This paper …" Dr. Jonas handed the paper in his hand to the teacher. He continued with a strange expression, "I just saw it on arXiv …"
As if he felt that it wasn't shocking enough, he added another sentence at the end of this sentence.
"It was uploaded by Professor Lu."
As expected, the moment Professor Stanley said this, his expression instantly became serious.
He sat up straight in his office chair and reached out to take a ballpoint pen from the pen holder. He began to read the first page of the paper line by line.
However, the moment he saw the title of the paper, he froze.
Implicit density functional method?
His eyebrows gradually furrowed.
About half an hour ago, he just said in class that implicit density functional theory was one of the cutting-edge topics in the field of computational materials science, and it was one of the big unsolved problems.
Especially the promotion from a simple system to a complex system. Whether it was for humans or computers, it was an extremely difficult thing at the current level.
This guy hasn't studied materials science for so many years.
Now that he came back, he made such a big news.
Is this for real?
Professor Stanley was silent. Dr. Jonas stood next to him and waited quietly. He didn't dare to breathe, afraid that he would disturb his supervisor's thinking.
Just like that, time ticked by.
He was about to fall asleep when Professor Stanley, who had turned to the last page, suddenly took a deep breath and closed the paper in his hand.
Jonas noticed the shocked expression on his teacher's face. He paused for a moment before he quickly stepped forward and asked,
"How is it, Professor? That paper … "
"It's very well written," Professor Stanley answered the question concisely. He felt like this was not convincing enough, so he couldn't help but add, "It's unimaginably good."
Unimaginably good …
When Jon heard this, he subconsciously swallowed his saliva.
Ever since he became a student of Professor Stanley, he had never heard his supervisor praise anyone like this. Not to mention that he didn't do this before he won the Nobel Prize, it was even more impossible for him to do it after he won the Nobel Prize.
This was probably the first time he saw an expression that was a mixture of shock, disbelief, and an almost impossible hint of admiration on the old man's face.
Professor Stanley returned the paper in his hand to his student. He looked at the surprised Jonas and went silent for a while before speaking.
"Implicit functional density theory is one of the most cutting-edge research in the materials science today. Due to fatal defects such as the inability to accurately describe van der Waals interactions and metals, it is difficult to be used to study solid materials … At least before today.
"He used some special mathematical methods in his thesis to supplement the implicit functional density theory. Although the modified implicit density functional theory still has some limitations, at least it can accurately describe the van der Waals force. Its application has also been extended from simple systems to the research of more complex carbon composite materials. "
A look of admiration appeared on Professor Stanley's face.
"With the current speed of development in the field of computational materials science, forget about a few years, even if you don't touch the cutting-edge research for a few months, you may be completely left behind.
"I thought that after leaving the materials science world for so many years, even if his strength did not decline, he would definitely not make any progress. I didn't expect …"
Seeing the expression on the professor's face, Jhonns gulped again.
"Didn't expect this?"
Professor Stanley nodded with a heavy expression.
"Yeah.
"I didn't expect this.
"He's still so strong!"
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