On June 24, the National Science and Technology Conference, the National Science and Technology Award Conference, and the Academician Conference of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences were held, and Academician Li Deren and Academician Xue Qikun won the 2023 National Highest Science and Technology Award.
As a native of Shandong, I am proud of our fellow Shandong Academician Xue Qikun.
Looking back on Academician Xue Qikun's speeches and interviews in recent years, I found that he and his team can achieve today's achievements without four words - the pursuit of perfection.
In December 1963, Xue Qikun was born in a small mountain village in Mengyin, Linyi, Shandong.
When he was a child, influenced by Newton, Einstein and other scientists in textbooks, Xue Qikun developed a strong interest in science, and then dimly produced a simple goal - to become a great scientist.
Driven by this goal, Xue Qikun has excelled in his studies since he was a child.
In 1980, 17-year-old Xue Qikun left his hometown in Linyi to study in the Department of Physics of Shandong University.
After entering the university, Xue Qikun was not as the outside world imagined, focusing on his studies and concentrating on his studies.
On the contrary, he has a wide range of interests and hobbies, and he is still the main player of the football team, and Xue Qikun has maintained his hobby of playing football for more than ten years.
In 1984, Xue Qikun graduated from the Department of Physics of Shandong University and came to teach in the Department of Physics of Qufu Normal University, the hometown of Confucius.
While teaching at Qufu Normal University, Xue Qikun taught and prepared for the master's exam.
In the first year, Xue Qikun failed because he scored only 39 points in mathematics.
The next year, Xue Qikun fell off the list again because his college physics score was only 39 points.
After failing the graduate school entrance examination twice, this kind of experience may have been given up by most people and simply taught in school.
However, Xue Qikun learned a lesson from the two failures and found a problem: his foundation in mathematics and physics is weak, which is the link he wants to strengthen and the direction of his efforts.
Therefore, in the third preparation for the exam, Xue Qikun increased the review and flexible application of basic knowledge of mathematics and physics, and finally was admitted to the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to study for a master's degree.
In 1990, after graduating from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xue Qikun continued to study for a doctorate.
During this period, Xue Qikun went to study at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan, and started a difficult study experience.
Xue Qikun once said: The period of studying at Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan was the most difficult period of his personal study experience.
When he first arrived in Japan, the language barrier was the first obstacle Xue Qikun encountered.
The language is not up to par, and the difficulties encountered by Xue Qikun in learning high-precision technology can be imagined.
At first, Xue Qikun was often criticized academically by professors, and that criticism was accompanied by contempt.
Xue Qikun's mentor was none other than Toshio Sakurai, who was known for his severity in academia.
Toshio Sakurai's lab has the famous nickname "7-Eleven" lab, which means arriving before 7 a.m. and leaving the lab after 11 p.m.
Xue Qikun wants to find an excuse to be late to the laboratory once in a while, which is absolutely not allowed at Sakurai Toshio.
What should I do if I don't get enough sleep and am too sleepy during the day?
Xue Qikun sat on the toilet in the toilet and took a nap to recuperate.
But the rest time should not be too long, he is generally controlled within 20 minutes, otherwise he will still be found by the teacher or senior in the laboratory after leaving the post for 20 minutes, and it will be another criticism.
One of the things that makes Xue Qikun unforgettable the most is:
At first, Xue Qikun thought that being assigned this job was a great insult to him.
But when he really carried out the screw classification work, Xue Qikun found that this seemed to be a simple and boring labor, but in fact, it was an important part of the cultivation of scientific quality, that is, the extreme.
A scientific researcher must do every job he is engaged in to the extreme!
With this extreme thinking and ultimate style of doing things, a year and a half later, Xue Qikun's subject made a major breakthrough, and this achievement became the most important achievement of Tohoku University in Sendai, Japan in the past 30 years, which made the little tutor who once "despised" him look at him with admiration.
Since then, Xue Qikun has gone from a student who is not treated by his mentor to a proud protégé in the heart of his mentor, and has completed a transformation from an "ugly duckling" to a "white swan".
Later, Xue Qikun was sent by his supervisor to the United States to attend a top academic conference and give a 20-minute academic report because of his important scientific research achievements.
This was supposed to be a happy thing, but Xue Qikun made a difficulty.
Because his spoken English was still very poor at that time, he could barely speak a complete English sentence, and the difficulty of making a 20-minute report can be imagined.
But the mentor has already handed over such a task to Xue Qikun, and he can only complete it with quality and quantity.
So he wrote down the contents of the report word by word, carefully and then found a room where no one was there and practiced continuously.
When Xue Qikun officially reported, he had already simulated and practiced more than 80 times.
In the continuous practice, Xue Qikun constantly corrected his pronunciation and grammar mistakes.
In the continuous practice, Xue Qikun's control of the entire report has almost reached the point of perfection, and he even designed how to interact with the audience in the report clearly.
ultimately
This also makes Xue Qikun more sure that the pursuit of perfection is the basis for doing a good job in scientific research.
Therefore, Xue Qikun is also very strict with his students, and he has become a veritable "7-11" professor, and he also teaches his students the pursuit of the ultimate style of doing things, and carries it forward.
Xue Qikun once had a doctorate, and his scientific research ability was very strong, but English was also his shortcoming.
Once, the doctor wanted to write an academic paper on the results of his research project, and when he handed the finished paper to Xue Qikun, Xue Qikun found that the doctor's English was as miserable as his spoken English.
In order to make up for the doctor's shortcomings in English, Xue Qikun asked his doctor to revise his thesis 10 times in a row, save each version, and package the revised 10 versions together and send them to him.
Unexpectedly, the doctor's execution was super strong, and he sent the revised 10 versions to Xue Qikun the next day.
When Xue Qikun saw that the time interval between the revisions of several versions was less than 1 minute, he knew that his students did not understand his good intentions and were simply perfunctory.
So he called the doctor into his office, took him to revise a passage of his thesis, and explained to him what he really meant.
Xue Qikun guided the students to focus on correcting grammatical errors for the first time, focusing on correcting the cohesion between paragraphs for the second time, and focusing on grasping the overall framework of the paper for the third time.
In short, each version has to have a direction of modification.
Xue Qikun used this attitude of pursuing perfection and striving for perfection to help his doctor overcome his shortcomings in English and train him to be a person who pursues perfection.
Today, his Ph.D. is also a teacher at a prestigious university and has passed on this attitude of striving for perfection.
In April 2013, the experimental results of the quantum anomalous Hall effect of Xue Qikun's team were reported by the media.
In the face of the results achieved by Xue Qikun and his team, his competitors are skeptical and even skeptical of the experimental data.
But Xue Qikun can confidently answer them: our data is not fake.
Because this achievement is the result of him and his team working day and night, earnestly, and pursuing the ultimate.
It took a year and four months for the top Japanese and American research teams in this field to reproduce the results of Xue's team's experiment.
It can be seen that Xue Qikun and his team have withstood the test of time and the test of competitors with their attitude of pursuing the ultimate.
now
Xue Qikun also wants to cultivate the best talents in the mainland through this most challenging scientific research problem, so that more people can treat their work with the attitude of pursuing the ultimate, so as to make our country stronger.
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