He is the teacher of Deng Jiaxian, Yang Zhenning, and Cheng Kaijia, and the founder of nuclear physics in China;
He was the first to discover antimatter, and was only one step away from missing the Nobel Prize;
He was the object of the United States' "attention", and in order to prevent him from returning home, the United States even dispatched military forces.
He is one of the continent's top scientists, Zhao Zhongyao.
So what contributions did Zhao Zhongyao make? Why do some people say he is a "beggar" scientist? Under the siege and interception of the United States, how did he return to China?
Shesheng carries radium, and rides alone for thousands of miles
In 1937, a strange scene appeared at the door of the temporary branch of Tsinghua University in Changsha.
A ragged beggar stood in front of the door, clutching a worn-out pickle jar in his hand, claiming to meet Mei Yiqi, the president of Tsinghua University.
This beggar was Zhao Zhongyao, and the purpose of his visit was very important, which was inextricably linked to the mainland's later successful development of the atomic bomb.
Of course, the doorman did not know his identity, but only when he was a mad beggar, he was going to send him away.
But Zhao Zhongyao did not pay any attention to the obstruction of the doorman, and just rushed towards the campus desperately.
The school gate was crowded for a while.
And it just so happened that Mei Yiqi passed by the school gate, ready to go out to run errands, and when he saw the beggar in front of him, he felt some familiarity, but he couldn't say who it was.
At this moment, Zhao Zhongyao saw him at a glance, took a few steps forward, and handed the pickle jar in his arms to Mei Yiqi's hand.
And said solemnly: "Principal Mei, please take good care of it."
After hearing the voice, Mei Yiqi confirmed that the beggar in front of him was professor Zhao Zhongyao, a physicist.
He hurriedly took Zhao Zhongyao back to his residence, and after bathing and eating, the two had a long talk.
It turned out that Zhao Zhongyao's trip was from Beijing, which lasted for a month and came to Changsha on foot.
And in that kimchi jar, it turned out to be 50 grams of radium!
Radium is an indispensable radioactive raw material for nuclear physics research, and it is also an indispensable material for the study of atomic bombs.
These 50 grams of radium were brought back from abroad by Zhao Zhongyao with great painstaking efforts.
At that time, the situation was chaotic, so after going through ups and downs, he also had to hand over radium to Mei Yiqi for temporary management.
It is worth mentioning that due to the extremely high radioactivity of radium, although Zhao Zhongyao did the lead sealing treatment inside the jar, the body was still greatly damaged.
The skin on the chest was almost completely decayed, and the arms also showed obvious symptoms.
Not only that, due to the lack of water and food along the way, Zhao Zhongyao lost more than 30 pounds.
After handing the radium to Mei Yiqi, he fell ill and rested for more than half a year before gradually getting better.
Zhao Zhongyao tossed and turned, not for personal gain, but because he understood that in order to change the face of China at that time, the progress of science and technology was crucial.
Therefore, a strong sense of mission appeared in his heart, which supported him to complete the difficult journey of more than a thousand miles.
Since then, the story of "giving birth to radium, walking a thousand miles to ride alone" has spread throughout Tsinghua Garden.
Under the influence of Zhao Zhongyao, the spirit of nationalism is also deeply rooted in the hearts of students.
So how did Zhao Zhongyao's 50 grams of radium come from? Why did he move it from Beijing?
To sort this out, we have to start with his experience.
Shuxiang Mendi, study abroad
Zhao Zhongyao was born in 1902 in Zhuji City, Zhejiang Province.
His parents were both intellectuals, and it can be said that he was born in Shuxiangmendi, especially Zhao Zhongyao's father, who was not only a gentleman of the private school, but also taught himself medical skills and was a famous local doctor.
It is reasonable to say that Zhao Zhongyao's life should be very superior.
However, his parents were eager to be righteous.
When children from poor families go to school, there is no tuition fee, and patients in difficulty come to consult without charge, and even give free medicine.
Although the generosity of the long past has won the Zhao family a good reputation, it has also brought a heavy economic burden.
Therefore, Zhao Zhongyao's life when he was a child was not easy, fortunately, their family was poor and happy.
Under the influence of his parents, Zhao Zhongyao also developed a good habit of being helpful and having the world in mind from an early age.
When he was young, Zhao Zhongyao did not love sports the most, so his body was very thin, but he was diligent and studious, and the books in his family were all familiar with him.
At a time when China was fragmented, Zhao Zhongyao's father, as a literati, was very worried about the rise and fall of the country, but he himself was older, so he pinned all his hopes on his son.
Zhao Zhongyao did not disappoint them, and at the age of 18, he was successfully admitted to Nanjing Higher Normal School, which was later Southeast University.
During his four years at the university, he devoted himself to the study of physics, which was quite successful, and after graduation, he was hired as a teaching assistant by Tsinghua University.
During his two years of teaching at Tsinghua University, Zhao Zhongyao can be described as sleeping and forgetting food, working day and night.
During the day, he prepares lessons for students and professors, and at night, he continues his theoretical research.
With the deepening of learning, Zhao Zhongyao deeply realized that at that time, there was still a huge gap between the level of physics in China and European and American countries.
Therefore, he deliberately found the original English textbook, and with the idea of "mastering the art of mastering the yi to control the yi", he began to study it carefully.
However, Zhao Zhongyao had never learned English since he was a child, and in order to figure out the content of the textbook, he had to start learning from scratch and compare the English dictionary every day, and the progress was very slow.
But he didn't give up, and in two years, he gave up almost all of his personal life and devoted himself to study and work.
In this way, he not only spied into the frontiers of physics, but also laid a solid foundation in English.
In 1927, after receiving an invitation from the California Institute of Technology, Zhao Zhongyao decided to study abroad.
Before studying abroad, he promised his teachers in college that he would "return from his studies and serve the motherland."
However, studying abroad life is not easy.
First of all, in terms of economy, prices in the United States are much higher than at home, and Zhao Zhongyao's public dispatch expenses can only barely survive.
The caltech's promised scholarship has been delayed.
To this end, he had to take time out of his odd jobs to solve the survival problem.
Second, Americans have a clear contempt for Chinese scholars.
You know, Zhao Zhongyao graduated from the top universities in China at that time, and also taught at Tsinghua University, with a very bright resume, but the American scholars in the laboratory are still reluctant to cooperate with him.
However, Zhao Zhongyao was not intimidated by the difficulties.
He continued his hard-fought research habits, which he soon achieved and was appreciated by the famous physicist Professor Mirigan.
As a result, Zhao Zhongyao's road to study abroad ushered in a turning point.
World-famous, missed the Nobel Prize
Mirigan, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1924, is a leading expert in nuclear physics.
Under his guidance, Zhao Zhongyao identified his research direction and was determined to make achievements in this field.
At first, Michigan considered that Zhao Zhongyao was a Chinese, and although he admired his attitude towards learning, he still did not trust him enough, so he only gave a relatively simple subject.
But Zhao Zhongyao did not spare him, asking Mirigan to entrust him with the most difficult and intractable subjects.
So, Mirigan held the attitude of seeing jokes and asked Zhao Zhongyao to study the dose measurement of radiation.
This was the most cutting-edge study of physics at that time, and even foreign scientists were difficult to obtain.
Unexpectedly, Zhao Zhongyao decisively took over, which surprised Mirigan.
For the next two years, Zhao Zhongyao buried his head in the laboratory all day, studying his own topics without sleep.
Finally, in 1929, he discovered that gamma-ray beams of high-energy photons were "abnormally absorbed" as they passed through heavy metal lead.
This discovery subverted the consensus of the physics community at that time and opened up a new field for nuclear physics research.
Because of this, Zhao Zhongyao successfully obtained a doctorate and was invited to work at the Institute of Physics of Harrow University in Germany.
A year later, Zhao Zhongyao returned to The United Kingdom to continue his career at the prestigious Cavendish Research Centre.
Here, he worked with the nuclear master Rutherford and published a number of blockbuster papers in the top journals "Nature" and "Introduction to Physics".
In particular, his studies of gamma rays and atomic nuclei have deduced the existence of positive and negative electron pairs.
From this, Zhao Zhongyao concluded that there must be antimatter in the world.
In the academic community at that time, this discovery was undoubtedly a bombshell, which was enough to win the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics.
However, since Zhao Zhongyao was a Chinese, the award review panel did not believe that this was the result of his independent research, and instead awarded the prize to Anderson, who was later than Zhao Zhongyao's research.
Later, the academic community was upset about him, and decades later, the famous physics master Li Zhengdao still helped him speak.
"Teacher Zhao should have been the first Chinese to win the Nobel Prize, but because of the mistakes of others at that time, Teacher Zhao's glory was buried."
However, Zhao Zhongyao did not take honor to heart, at that time the domestic environment was chaotic, he only wanted to return to the motherland as soon as possible.
At this time, Rutherford gave him 50 grams of radium for research, and Zhao Zhongyao secretly brought it back to China, laying the initial foundation for future atomic bomb research.
After returning to China, Zhao Zhongyao served as a professor of physics at Tsinghua University, presided over the establishment of China's first nuclear physics laboratory, and trained Deng Jiaxian, Qian Sanqiang and other physicists.
As for the 50 grams of radium, it has been kept in the nuclear physics laboratory of the main university of Tsinghua University.
However, in 1937, with the Japanese launching a full-scale invasion of China, Peiping was soon occupied by the Japanese army.
Zhao Zhongyao knew that once radium fell into the hands of the Japanese, they would definitely take the opportunity to study weapons of mass destruction, and the consequences would be unimaginable.
So, risking his life, he sneaked back into the lab and took all the radium out.
At that time, Tsinghua had a branch school in Changsha, and Zhao Zhongyao decided to send it to Changsha for safekeeping.
To this end, he sealed the radium into an inconspicuous pickle jar, put on tattered clothes, disguised as a beggar, and walked all the way from Beiping to Changsha.
So there was the scene we mentioned at the beginning, when Zhao Zhongyao arrived in Changsha, he had already suffered from the wind and frost and became a real beggar.
But his sacrifice has undoubtedly brought great benefits to the country.
Overcome all difficulties and return home with great difficulties
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Zhao Zhongyao did not abandon academic research and braved artillery fire to teach at southwest United University and Central University.
In 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, instantly reducing hundreds of thousands of cities to wasteland.
As an expert in the field, Zhao Zhongyao naturally knows the power of the atomic bomb very well.
A year later, the United States conducted another test explosion on a small island in the Pacific Ocean, and Zhao Zhongyao was invited by the American Institute of Physics to participate in the test explosion ceremony.
Therefore, Zhao Zhongyao personally saw the atomic bomb explode.
After personally experiencing the power of the atomic bomb, he decided to go abroad again, bring back the most cutting-edge scientific and technological achievements, and develop his own nuclear weapons for China.
In the years that followed, he was full of rewards, not only getting parts for the nuclear accelerator, but also having a lot of information.
However, the actions of the Kuomintang reactionaries at home were disgraced by Zhao Zhongyao, who did not dare to hand over such an important matter to Chiang Kai-shek.
Therefore, after the founding of New China in 1949, he decided to return to China with his research results.
Of course, the road back home is bumpy.
As a top expert and scholar, he also received "special care".
Since then, the CIA and the Pentagon have taken turns to conduct several rounds of thorough investigations of Zhao Zhongyao.
Fortunately, Zhao Zhongyao had long anticipated that the United States would not let him leave easily, so he prepared in advance and had already divided the parts of the accelerator into thirty containers and shipped them back to China in batches.
Therefore, even if the United States checks the bottom line, it will find nothing.
However, even if the mad Americans could not find evidence, they imposed a "spying crime" on his head, threw him into prison, and detained and tortured him for two months.
In the end, the international physics community strongly condemned the bad behavior of the United States, and at the same time, the Foreign Ministry represented by Premier Zhou also put pressure on the United States.
Under the pressure of many parties, the US government finally failed to resist, and could only allow Zhao Zhongyao to board the cruise ship.
In November 1950, he finally returned to the embrace of his homeland.
After returning to China, Zhao Zhongyao threw himself into research non-stop.
During this period, he not only established the Department of Modern Physics of the University of Science and Technology of China, but also participated in the preparation of the Institute of High Energy Physics.
Most importantly, in the research and development of the atomic bomb, Zhao Zhongyao gave a lot of constructive advice, which greatly accelerated the progress of research and development.
On October 16, 1964, China's first atomic bomb was successfully tested on the Gobi Desert, and looking at the mushroom cloud that rose, Zhao Zhongyao could not help but burst into tears.
This top scientist, who had been a "beggar", interrogated, and squatted in prison, finally saw the picture of his longing for a lifetime.
Although, for various reasons, he was ultimately unable to enter the ranks of the two bombs and one star, his outstanding contributions are still worth remembering.