Speaking of 杨振宁, many people know that he is a famous physicist in China. His achievements in physics can be compared with those of Hawking and Madame Curie. As a Chinese, I am very proud.
Some people say that Yang Zhenning is the greatest scientist after World War II, because Yang Zhenning is in an era where scientific research is not easy, but he can still make epic achievements.
However, Yang Zhenning, a scientist of Chinese origin, and another scientist 李政道, however, have a grievance. Today we will tell this story.
Two heroes are competing
Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao, used to be partners and have long-term cooperation in scientific research. , And then together won the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physics. However, one mountain cannot tolerate two tigers. After the success, the two people quarreled. Who on earth contributed more to the award?
In 1962, contradictions broke out. This year, the "New Yorker" magazine published a long article called "The Problem of Parity". Many places in this article hinted that Li Zhengdao was the first to put forward the overall idea for the Nobel Prize that year. Later, someone needed help with calculations. To Yang Zhenning, Yang Zhenning played a supporting role.
After this article was published, the contradiction between the two people became public and they soon broke off.
李政道
This controversy lasted for a long time, until 2010, Yang Zhenning responded to it for the last time. After that, I stopped commenting on this matter, which lasted more than half a century.
In-depth details, everyone found that the two sides are different from each other, and many papers are indirect evidence. No one can tell who contributed the most.
Think about it carefully. Two scientific researchers work together on one thing. It is really hard to tell who puts forward the overall idea and who is the key to the breakthrough. The collaborators themselves usually overestimate their contributions.
The famous popular science scholar Zhuo Ke believes that the credit belongs to Yang Zhenning, because from the perspective of the scientific community, this field belongs to Yang Zhenning. This sounds a bit unreasonable. Scientific research is not about elections. Can reputation be determined by the perception of bystanders?
The two-person cooperation won the Nobel Prize
Yang Zhenning’s status
To understand this problem, we can cite real life example of. For example, who created the iPhone? You would definitely say that it was Jobs, but Jobs did not understand program code or circuit communication. How could he make an iPhone?
For another example, the company's sales director went to inspect the store and found that the store had a very good salesperson, so the director promoted this salesperson's method to other stores in the company. At the end of the year, the company's performance has soared, who will be credited with the credit? It must be written on the director.
The real society is so unfair. People who contribute a lot sometimes have to give credit to others. why?
Because credit is different from money and power, its distribution mechanism is not entirely based on the commonly understood contribution, but based on who belongs to the field. If you make a contribution in the field of others, no matter how great the contribution, the credit still belongs to the owner of this field.
This is the case. The two met for the first time in 1964. Yang Zhenning was in the second year of PhD study, and Li Zhengdao just read Sophomore. At that time, Yang Zhenning's level was already close to the level of a professor, and Li Zhengdao was just a fledgling. Although under Yang Zhenning’s support,Li Zhengdao grew very fast, and has been cooperating with Yang Zhenning in the follow-up to complete a lot of valuable research.
The problem is that before Li Zhengdao won the Nobel Prize, all heavyweight texts were co-written with Yang Zhenning. Even if these papers are all ranked first by his name, it is completely impossible to shake Yang Zhenning's authority in the academic world.
Need to insist on turning over
Then Li Zhengdao will never be able to look up? Not necessarily, the owner of a field can be replaced.
For example, the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to two people, one is Chinese physicist Zhu Diwen, and the other is Zhu Diwen's mentor Ashkin.
Whose credit is it? If it is based on what I just said, the credit is of course the tutor Ashkin. But something interesting came. In the following time, Zhu Diwen continued to do research in this field and published many papers, but Ashkin did not continue to do it. As a result, after more than ten years, the entire industry only recognized Zhu Diwen.
Zhu Diwen
Yang Zhenning and Li Zhengdao’s dispute, the real answer is here. If Li Zhengdao felt that his contribution was greater than Yang Zhenning in 1957, he would still have a chance to make a comeback in the next 20 years.
Because the conclusive conclusion to this dispute is not the fact, but what the two scientists did in this field after the award. The fact is that since the two broke in 1962, Li Zhengdao has never made outstanding contributions in this field.
And Yang Zhenning developed the "Yang-Mills equation" that is much more important than the Nobel Prize achievement in just three years after the two terminated their cooperation. Later, there were 7 Nobel Prizes, all of which were directly won using this "Yang-Mills equation".
Therefore, Li Zhengdao never had a chance to comeback after 1980. In the field of prestige and credit, the most important thing is not contribution, but time and experience accumulated over time.
If you want to have achievements, but also credit and prestige, then simply open up a field of your own. If there are already people in this field, then continue to work hard and continue to make contributions. Time will give you the fairness you expect.
