Chapter 88: "Winning Two World-Class Awards in One Day, Ji Zhixing Reaches New Academic Heights!"
Shocking! This year's Turing Award and Wolf Prize winners are the same person!
Spanning three major fields, a review of Ji Zhixing's three milestones.
The media is astute; on the day the Turing Award and the Wolf Prize in Physics were announced, countless news articles poured out. The Fields Medal, the Turing Award, and the Wolf Prize—these three top awards in mathematics, computer science, and physics—have collectively propelled Ji Zhixing's reputation to new heights.
The name Ji Zhixing and his achievements in studying and research have become a hot topic of discussion both online and offline. Many primary and secondary schools have even compiled and printed out his story to distribute to students as essay material.
Ji Zhixing's struggles, academic achievements—and of course, his enormous research income and handsome appearance—made him an idol for a generation of young people.
Previously, when many elementary school students were asked "What do you want to be when you grow up?", the most frequent answer was "internet celebrity." Now, more and more children are saying they want to be scientists!
The innocent children are unaware of the hardships of scientific research, but Ji Zhixing's deeds have firmly planted a seed of scientific research in their hearts, which may sprout and grow into a towering tree at any time.
For Ji Zhixing, guiding more children onto the path of scientific research brings him more joy than winning an award, because one summarizes the past and the other foreshadows the future.
Of course, the prize money also made him quite happy. Construction has begun on his second laboratory—a high-purity germanium detector 100 meters underground, encased in six layers of "armor" including polyethylene, lead, and copper. The project is estimated to cost approximately 1.29 billion yuan, with equipment investment around 460 million yuan. Therefore, more research funding is always welcome.
What is gained on one front may be lost on another. Ji Zhixing gained honor and money, but his experiments hit a bottleneck.
At the morning group discussion, Ji Zhixing frowned as he summarized the biggest problem at present:
"The nuclear transmutation and hysteresis effects in low-energy nuclear reactions cannot be explained; their reaction tracks and physical laws differ significantly from previous experiments. If torsion field theory is introduced to explain this, then the anomalous energy release and the nuclear reaction become contradictory..."
Yi Yan and Lin Yujing looked at each other. The results of their two groups were used to assist Ji Zhixing's experiment. "Low-energy nuclear reaction" and "existence of torsion field" were their results at this stage.
A contradiction has emerged between experiment and theory, indicating either an error in the experiment or an error in the theory. Neither is good, but the latter is more serious. An error in the experiment can be corrected, but an error in classical theory will directly lead to even larger errors in the subsequent logical chain. Once the foundation is crooked, the building above will crumble.
“How about…” Yi Yan hesitated before speaking, “our group repeats the first phase of the experiment again?”
Lin Yujing pondered for a moment and said, "Our group can study particle spin and the rotational angular momentum of macroscopic objects to see if we can observe new torsion field properties."
Ji Zhixing glanced around and saw that everyone looked somewhat dejected. It's normal for experiments to have errors; what's frightening is that the basis of the experiment, the fundamental principle, has unknown flaws, which means that their experiment was meaningless from the start.
"How about this, we'll take the rest of the day off. Everyone can clear their minds and rest. Tomorrow's the weekend, so we can continue next week," Ji Zhixing said.
Re-conducting experiments with skepticism about the theory can easily lead to hesitation and timidity; it's better to take a break and relax your tired mind.
Ji Zhixing is undoubtedly a good boss, which is reflected in his ability, material support, and consideration for his subordinates. Therefore, although it was a holiday, everyone did not rush to pack their bags and leave, but instead returned to the laboratory first to organize the data and put away the materials.
Yi Yan glanced through the data that had just come out that morning, unsure whether the excitation functions, angular distributions, and energy spectra of the emitted particles from these low-energy nuclear reactions were still useful. After thinking for a moment, he decided to give them to Ji Zhixing first.
Upon knocking on the director's office door, Yi Yan saw Ji Zhixing typing away rapidly on his keyboard, the speed of which was clearly unrelated to their stalled experiment.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" Yi Yan asked.
"You give me a peach, I'll repay you with a precious jade." Ji Zhixing showed compassion for these researchers, and naturally, he wanted to do what he could for Ji Zhixing in return.
"Oh, no need, thank you." Ji Zhixing looked up and smiled. "It's just writing a paper."
Yi Yan couldn't help but advise, "Isn't this too tiring? Don't you need to rest? Writing papers is so mentally taxing."
“No, writing papers helps organize the scattered fragments of thought in my mind, making them into a more effective and concise knowledge system and logical structure. For me, it’s a break.” Seeing Yi Yan’s unconvinced expression, Ji Zhixing gave an example, “It’s like defragmenting a computer’s hard drive.”
Sitting to the side, Deng Zhixing glanced at Ji Zhixing with a resentful look. For him, writing papers would only scatter his brain to pieces, causing his expression to become more chaotic and ultimately crashing his brain.
Yi Yan isn't as afraid of writing papers as Deng Yi, but he absolutely cannot agree that writing papers is something that can be categorized as "rest"—people like that are truly passionate about academia...
"What field is it in? Do you need me to help you organize the references?" Yi Yan glanced at Ji Zhixing's desk and found that there wasn't a single reference.
“No need for references,” Ji Zhixing replied matter-of-factly.
"Huh?" Yi Yan was puzzled. Who writes a paper without references, unless it's a field they've pioneered?
"It's about photonic chips."
"Oh." It really is a field I created myself.
"Then I won't bother you any longer." Yi Yan said and left, asking one last time before closing the door, "Which publication are you planning to publish in?" He needed to buy it and read it.
“Annual Reviews”.
"Okay." Yi Yan only realized what it meant after closing the door: *Annual Reviews*?!
Founded in 1932, Annual Reviews is a journal that focuses on review articles and systematically examines the academic progress of a particular discipline, providing directional guidance for the research of scientists worldwide. It is the world's most authoritative multidisciplinary review journal.
Annual Reviews has always adhered to strict editorial standards and does not accept ordinary submissions. Instead, it adopts an invitation-only system, inviting top scholars in various fields who are both cutting-edge and authoritative.
Conversely, the invitation from *Annual Reviews* symbolizes the international academic community's high regard and collective recognition of the scholar.
Yi Yan recalled his doctoral supervisor, who, upon receiving an invitation from *Annual Reviews*, secluded himself for a month to write the review. After publication, the university even sent out a congratulatory message.
But Ji Zhixing is so casual; he just started writing whenever he had a spare moment...
Yi Yan returned to the laboratory with a sigh all the way.
His team members had almost finished packing up, and seeing Yi Yan's wistful expression, they couldn't help but ask, "What's wrong?"
Yi Yan's words elicited a collective sigh of disappointment. While they were still striving to reach SCI journals like *Nature*, Ji Zhixing had already received an invitation to contribute to *Annual Reviews*.
"I dare say that in the past 80 years, our boss is definitely the youngest author to have published an article in Annual Reviews!" Shan Yan said with pride.
Lin Yujing smiled: "I'll definitely receive a second writing invitation in the future."
Upon hearing this, everyone smiled knowingly, understanding what Lin Yujing meant—their boss would definitely be able to write another review for the *Annual Reviews* for pioneering a new path in the field of vacuum energy!
Although the experiment is currently hampered, the thought of having a boss like Ji Zhixing has suddenly lifted the previously gloomy atmosphere in the lab, and everyone's mindset has become much more relaxed.
Ji Zhixing hadn't expected his review paper for "Annual Reviews" to have such an effect, and he was still typing away at his computer.
Since the Navier-Stokes equations, he has stopped submitting articles to foreign journals, focusing instead on building a domestic journal system in China with other scholars. Today, the impact factor of *Chinese Science* has continued to rise to 21.637, meaning that more and more scholars, both Chinese and foreign, are citing articles from this journal, and its influence is growing.
As the impact factor increases, more and more Chinese scholars are willing to submit their hard work to "Chinese Science," thus creating a virtuous cycle.
Originally, Ji Zhixing had no intention of submitting any more articles, but this time was different. The Annual Reviews was too special; he couldn't just hand over this supreme academic authority that outlined the key points, so he agreed to write an article.
Fortunately, all the data and theories were in his head, so they didn't take up too much of his time.
After spending two or three hours writing, Ji Zhixing stretched his back and planned to go out to stretch his muscles, but when he went downstairs he saw that everyone was still there.
"Hey, you guys haven't gone home yet?" Ji Zhixing asked.
Yi Yan replied, "When we were leaving, we received a weather forecast saying that a typhoon was passing through and traffic was restricted, and it wouldn't be able to resume until the afternoon."
"I see." Ji Zhixing nodded.
Shan Yan added, "We were just saying that the weather forecast was so inaccurate this time."
Since the Navier-Stokes equations were solved, weather forecasts in China have become increasingly accurate. For weather phenomena like typhoons, which form early at sea, accurate predicted tracks are usually released three days in advance. This time, the forecast was indeed released early, and it was quite accurate for the first two days. However, today's path development is completely different from the initial prediction.
Ji Zhixing also found it a bit strange. A national agency like the Meteorological Bureau had completely replaced its computing system with "Huaxin No. 1". Logically, calculating typhoon trajectories should be faster and more accurate than before.
"The strangest thing is that none of the forecasting agencies in the world predicted it accurately." Deng said, then opened his phone. "Look! The most unique typhoon of the year—Baidi!"
Ji Zhixing checked Deng Yi's phone and saw that Baidi's path was indeed unpredictable. The original prediction was that it would move northeast along the coastline, which wouldn't significantly affect life on land. But yesterday it abruptly turned west, made landfall, and continued moving inland.
Lin Yujing looked at it for a moment and said, "Actually, Bai Di is quite sensible. He chose to travel through the suburbs and foothills, and didn't go through the city center much."
Yi Yan chimed in, "That's right. If only we could be a little more sensible and head straight for Yingcheng to put out the wildfire there."
Ji Zhixing's heart stirred.
A note from the author:
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