Perhaps it was because of his age, but Lu Zhou always felt like there was a small gap between him and his students. Especially since Qin Yue and Hadi were one year older than him, there was no age gap at all.
Perhaps in the eyes of his students, he was also a respectable "boss" who did not have much dignity.
In order to convince Lu Zhou, Hadi even said that this was a Princeton tradition. Lu Zhou had lived here for a long time, but this was the first time he heard that Princeton had a party to celebrate a prize winner.
Obviously, this was made up by Hadi.
However, since he was so enthusiastic and the other students were also very interested, Lu Zhou let him be.
The location of the party was obviously Lu Zhou's house. As for the number of people attending, it was tentatively set at six.
However, in the end, the scale of this party exceeded Lu Zhou's expectations.
Originally, he only wanted to celebrate with his students, but someone spread the news that he won the award. Then, there were more than one or two people who came to celebrate.
First, Luo Wenxuan and his current girlfriend said that they were coming back. Then, Luo Wenxuan's supervisor, Edward Witten, heard the news and also came.
Then, Deligné came. Even though this old Belgian man didn't like to go to crowded places, he still brought a bottle of whiskey to the party.
Then, there were Lu Zhou's friends from the Ivy Club, as well as the professors and researchers from the University of Cambridge that he had a good relationship with …
Fortunately, Lu Zhou prepared a lot of champagne and food in advance. Otherwise, he might not have been able to handle it.
On the day of the party, the lawn in front of the house was filled with the fragrance of barbecue and beer.
Standing next to the long table, Lu Zhou and his former supervisor were chatting about computational materials problems.
Unlike Lu Zhou, Deligné didn't think that this was a very meaningful job. He thought that it was a waste of time.
"… Mathematics is pure. It's more like an art than a tool. Mathematicians should think about how to build this building. As for how to apply it to other fields, that's the job of physicists or chemists. "
After taking a sip of whiskey, the old man with a shiny forehead looked as sharp as ever.
"My dear Professor Deligné, I can't agree with your point of view." Witten, who was a quarter bald, suddenly interrupted the conversation and said, "Mathematics is a great tool, but mathematics alone cannot reflect its greatness. Only when it is applied to more practical fields can it be maximized … For example, physics."
"I don't see any practical significance in your M-theory." Deligné hit the nail on the head and shut him up. He then looked at Lu Zhou and was silent for a while before he raised his glass.
"In any case, it's an honor worthy of you. Congratulations."
Lu Zhou bumped hands with his tutor and happily said, "Thank you."
"Me too, congratulations." Witten smiled and also bumped his glass with Lu Zhou. He then said in a relaxed tone, "Maybe the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study should open a computational materials department —"
Deligné said with a straight face, "No way."
Witten shrugged and said, "Okay, I was just kidding, pretend I didn't say anything."
The original intention of the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study was to establish a Platonic school of pure theoretical research. The Institute of Natural Science had seven full-time researchers. Other than one biophysics professor, the other six were researching theoretical physics and astrophysics.
As for the Institute of Mathematics, there were many research directions, but all of them were pure mathematics.
After all, there were enough people researching applied science. There had to be a group of noble people who continued to explore the field of theoretical research.
What was the use of this?
Before the birth of semiconductor technology, no one knew what the use of relativity and quantum mechanics was.
…
Everyone at the party had a great time, and Lu Zhou was also quite happy.
For him, the Adams Chemistry Prize was undoubtedly a pleasant surprise.
He originally thought that his first cross-field medal would be in the field of theoretical physics. He did not expect to be surprised by the field of chemistry.
The US $10,000 prize money was not expensive. In fact, almost all of the winners did not care about this small amount of money.
Compared to scholars who studied mathematics and theoretical physics, scholars who studied chemistry were relatively wealthy. As long as they paid a little attention to intellectual property, they could easily achieve financial freedom.
In addition to receiving the award, Lu Zhou also had to give a speech at the Organic Chemistry Conference in San Francisco in April.
This speech could be academic or non-academic, it all depended on the individual.
However, even though there was no need to submit a paper, Lu Zhou still wanted to seriously prepare.
Coincidentally, on the third day of his return to Princeton, Professor Sarrot had a video call with him and reported on the research progress.
"… According to your request, we did 200 sets of experiments. The relevant experimental data has been sent to your email. However, I have to tell you the unfortunate news. We did not observe the cage-like molecules in the reaction chamber. With all due respect, using carbon nanotubes to modify fullerene materials sounds interesting, but it is not a good research idea. "
When Sarrot said this, he looked exhausted.
He had been busy with this for the past month. He controlled the reaction temperature and reaction time and did a lot of experiments. Unfortunately, other than obtaining a pile of complex and useless ash, there was no other surprising discovery.
Lu Zhou sat in his office chair and spun a pen. He had a thoughtful look on his face.
"Nothing?"
"Not really." Sarrot shrugged and said, "Even though we didn't get what you wanted, according to the experiment you designed, we still harvested a lot of by-products that we have never seen before … Although I'm not sure what use those things have."
Lu Zhou's heart moved, and he said, "Send some of those by-products over."
Sarrot: "Okay, send it directly to your office at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study?"
Lu Zhou thought for a bit and said, "Send it to the Frick Chemistry Laboratory. Just write my name. I'm not sure if the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study accepts packages with chemical information. "
After Lu Zhou hung up the phone, he turned on his computer and opened the email that Sarrot sent him.
The email listed the product information, quality analysis results, and other data.
Lu Zhou carefully read the experiment report and sighed in relief. He leaned back in his office chair and began to think.
Looking at the macroscopic data, the carbon nanotubes and fullerene materials that opened the π bond did not recombine as he expected under the thermal reaction conditions.
Even though this was theoretically feasible, from a practical point of view, the countless side reactions made this operation difficult to achieve.
However, he didn't expect that he didn't even collect a microgram of the sample.
"Looks like I have to redesign the experiment!"
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