Early morning…
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Professor Stanley was standing on the podium, giving a lecture to undergraduates as usual.
Ever since losing to Lu Zhou in that “race” on patents for lithium-sulfur battery electrode materials, he lost ExxonMobil’s support, left the industry in embarrassment, and returned to the academic world.
However, that might have been a blessing in disguise.
Because of the research on lithium batteries, he, Professor Goodnough, and Professor Akira Yoshino won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
After receiving this honorary crown, his academic path was paved smoothly. Not only did ExxonMobil intend to repair the relationship with him, but there were even more students signing up for his classes.
Of course, receiving this award had a huge amount of luck involved.
Had it not been for the increasing use of lithium batteries in recent years, which became a cornerstone in the new electrical era, the Nobel Prize Committee might not have considered their work so seriously.
Because of this, if Lu Zhou hadn’t already won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, many people would think that Lu Zhou was more qualified to receive the prize on lithium batteries.
Many years had passed since then. A lot of things had happened, and Professor Stanley’s opinion of Lu Zhou had changed drastically from before.
Science could change the world; mathematics could change science.
He admitted that his research philosophy was somewhat influenced by that man.
Like his friends said, Lu Zhou’s computation ability left him such a huge impression that he was still researching computational materials over these past few years. He hoped to find a breakthrough in the bottleneck of modern materials research…
“… Discovering and exploring phenomena, summarizing and explaining principles, this is the process of creating knowledge, this is also the essence of science.
“In traditional materials science research, most of the discoveries of new materials were the result of accidental discoveries by researchers, or the results of countless repeated attempts. It is obvious that it was a tedious process until modern computers. Since then, people have created various empirical models based on experimental results and changed to a more rational experiment design. This is what made it a science field.
“Yes, prior to all this, I don’t think materials science was a science; it was more like an engineers’ ‘craft’. Your homework today revolves around the density functional theory I talked about in class. Write a review paper.
“That’s it, folks.”
After announcing the end of the class, Professor Stanley put away the textbooks and returned 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. Johns suddenly stood up and walked toward him with a stack of papers.
“Professor, I want to show you something.”
Professor Stanley noticed the weird expression on his student’s face. He raised his eyebrows and put on the glasses he had just taken off.
“What thing?”
“This paper…” Dr. Jones passed the paper in his hand to his supervisor, then said with a weird expression, “I just saw it on arXiv…”
As if he felt like this explanation was too short, he immediately added afterward, “It’s from Professor Lu.”
Sure enough, the expression on Professor Stanley’s face became serious the moment he heard this.
He sat upright on his office chair, reached out, and took out a ballpoint pen from the pen holder. He started reading from the first page of the paper, line by line.
However, the moment he saw the title of the paper, his whole body froze.
Implicit density functional method?
His eyebrows gradually furrowed.
Half an hour ago, he just said in the lecture that implicit density functional theory was one of the most difficult unsolved problems in the field of computational materials.
Particularly, the expansion from a simple system to a complex system was extremely difficult, whether it was for humans or for computers.
This guy hasn’t researched materials science for so many years.
And now he claims to have made such a groundbreaking result.
Is this real?
Professor Stanley didn’t say a word. Dr. Jones waited quietly beside him.
Time slowly passed by.
When Jones was almost about to fall asleep, Professor Stanley turned to the last page; he suddenly took a breath and closed the paper in his hand.
Jones noticed the look of surprise on his supervisor’s face. He stepped forward and asked, “What do you think professor? About the paper…”
“It was well written,” Stanley answered the question concisely, but he felt like he wasn’t convincing enough. Professor Stanley added, “It’s insanely profound.”
Insanely profound…
When Jones heard these words, he gulped.
Ever since working under this big name, Jones had never heard him praise anyone this much. Not before he won the Nobel Prize, and definitely not after he won the Nobel Prize.
This was probably the first time he saw the old man’s face was full of shock, disbelief, and almost admiration.
Professor Stanley returned the paper in his hand to his student and looked at him with a surprised look. He was silent for a while before he spoke.
“Implicit functional density theory is one of the most cutting-edge research in the field of materials science. Due to the inability to accurately describe van der Waals interactions and other fatal defects, it is difficult to be used to research solid materials… At least before today.
“He used some special mathematical methods in his paper to supplement implicit functional density theory. Although the modified implicit density functional theory still has some limitations, at least it is able to improve the modeling of van der Waals force. Its application has also been extended from simple systems to the research of more complex carbon composite materials.”
A deep admiration appeared in Professor Stanley’s face and eyes.
“With the current development speed of the field of computational materials science, forget about a few years, even if you don’t keep up with the most cutting-edge research for a few months, you may be completely left behind.
“I thought that since he had left the field of materials science for so many years, even if his strength did not decrease, he would certainly not make any progress, but I didn’t expect…”
Jones gulped and spoke.
“… Didn’t expect?”
Professor Stanley nodded heavily.
“Yeah.
“I didn’t expect it…
“He’s still so terrifyingly strong!”
