Chapter 395: Chapter 211 "Concerns on Subscribing Cautiously Due to Extensive Scientific Explanations in This Chapter"_2

To speak more objectively.

In terms of achievements, Elder Yang surpasses Hawking, but in pure theory, Hawking is somewhat more excellent.

As of now.

Elder Yang’s comprehensive contributions in existing research fields are higher than Hawking’s.

Elder Yang’s work has become the foundational theory for many branches in physics and even mathematics, such as the Yang-Mills Gauge Field Theory and the Yang-Baxter Equation.

These are much higher than Hawking’s most representative achievements.

However, Hawking leads in the theoretical citation aspect, such as his paper’s citation count being more than twice that of Elder Yang.

In fact, their contributions can be vividly described with another analogy.

A long, long time ago.

Archimedes carved out a cave to live in.

Galileo thought the cave was too basic, so he dug a pit, planning to build a house.

He found a foreman named Newton, who brought Kepler, Hook, Descartes, and a group of followers to lay the foundation.

Over the following centuries.

A group of physicists, including Faraday, built a beautiful and perfect house on this foundation.

Then Kelvin announced the house was finished, everyone could move in and live, everything was already perfect, and physicists had nothing left to do.

But why isn’t the sky clear, and why are there two dark clouds overhead?

Maxwell, the maker of the clouds, struck down two bolts of lightning, and the house collapsed.

Maxwell said, why build a house at all? Can’t the vision be more far-reaching?

So a second-generation foreman, Einstein, appeared.

He led Lorentz and other followers to build a floor named "Special Theory of Relativity."

Later, he didn’t need any followers anymore and independently built an entire building on that floor!

Though this building was completed, its decoration remained unfinished.

The subsequent scientists, like Schwarzschild and Hawking, did the decorating on Einstein’s building.

Hawking pretty much only decorated a wall.

After completing this building.

Einstein called Planck, Bohr, Heisenberg, and others to build another building next door, which is Quantum Mechanics.

From the outside, this building seems even more impressive.

And Elder Yang?

He installed an elevator shaft within this building, connecting it through the Standard Model.

Later people found that the two buildings couldn’t connect, so Witten and others used strings to build a bridge there.

Currently, it seems to be just a rainbow bridge and cannot be walked upon.

As for the future, that’s uncertain; maybe the rainbow bridge is the truth?

Looking up to this point.

It’s easy to judge the contributions of Elder Yang and Hawking:

One decorated a wall, the other installed an elevator shaft.

As for comparing them to the building builder Einstein and the foundation layer Newton, it’s really impossible. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Of course.

If some of Hawking’s theories can be experimentally validated, then the situation would be different.

Unfortunately, due to various reasons, many people can’t have a concrete understanding of Elder Yang’s achievements.

Most people, when mentioning Elder Yang, only think of two words:

Nationality and marriage.

This is actually unfair to Elder Yang, in some sense he has become another Old Su, with his achievements separated from the general public by a very thick and impenetrable information barrier.

Also, since Elder Yang was mentioned, let’s correct a mistaken rumor here.

Just like the saying Hawking stands shoulder to shoulder with Einstein, many marketing accounts online have spread a title similar to:

"Nature selected the 20 greatest physicists of the millennium in 2000, Elder Yang was the only living person and the only Huaxia person."

This rumor seems full of pride and inspiring.

However, very regrettably.

Just like the previously mentioned fabricated hacker legend Guo Shenghua, this rumor is also a fabrication.

Currently, many libraries have all issues of the 2000 published "Nature" magazine, and the result is self-evident:

In the 51 issues published by "Nature" in 2000, there is no list electing physicists.

Also in the advanced search mode on the Nature website — nature.com/search (with three Ws in front), searching Elder Yang’s name, you won’t find this content either.

So where did this sentence appear?

Frequent browser users should know.

Baidu has a very interesting feature, called the "custom time search" function.

Through this function, it’s easy to find, when and where the rumor regarding Elder Yang and "Nature" magazine’s selection came from.

With a simple search, it easily becomes clear.

Before November 27, 2014.

The combination of keywords "Elder Yang/Nature magazine/greatest" was.....

0.

That’s right.

The filtered results didn’t include any about the selection of physicists by "Nature" magazine.

But if the search time range is adjusted to one day later, November 28, 2014.

The search result will change:

Within this time range, the first result contains the selection content by "Nature" magazine.

Thus it can be confirmed.

November 28, 2014.

This was the first time this rumor appeared on the internet.

Clicking this search result reveals it was posted by a user named "Duokongwjian2013" in Tianya Community.

In this post, the user wrote:

"In 2000, Nature magazine selected the greatest physicists of the past millennium, with only about twenty to thirty people on the list (which can be compared to the canonization list of physics), Elder Yang was the only living great person on the canonization list."