Yan Keats: Talk about reading, teaching, and doing scientific research | Rolls

Yan Keats (1901-1996) is a famous physicist, educator and one of the founders of modern physics research in China, and has made important contributions in the fields of piezoelectric crystallography, spectroscopy, atmospheric physics, applied optics and the development of optical instruments. In 1923, Yan Keats graduated from southeastern university, went to France to study in the same year, obtained a master's degree from the University of Paris in 1925, and received a doctorate in science from the French state in 1927. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he participated in the preparation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, participated in the establishment of the University of Science and Technology of China and served as the honorary president

The French Love Letters published by the Commercial Press contain family letters written by Mr. Yan during his study in France in the 1920s, most of which are love letters to his fiancée Zhang Zongying, a talented woman in the Chinese Department of Southeast University, as well as letters and other manuscripts from him and several well-known scientists. Today's article was originally published in The People's Education, No. 11, 1980, and was also included in the book.

This article is an authorized excerpt from the French Love Letter (The Commercial Press, first edition, May 2021). Go to "Back to Park" and click "Read the Original Article" at the end of the article to purchase this book. Click "Watching" and post your thoughts to the message area, as of August 22, 2021 at 12:00 noon, we will select 2 messages, each person will give away 1 book.

Written by 丨 Yan Keats

01

Reading is mainly on your own, especially for college students. Reading has a process of development from low to high, which is the development process of listening (listening to lectures) - watching (self-study) - using (looking up books).

Listening to lectures, this is the basic way for students to systematically learn knowledge. If you want to learn well, you have to be able to listen to lectures. The so-called listening to lectures is to grasp the key points of the teacher's classroom teaching, clarify the basic concepts, actively think about associations, and know how to apply. Some college students, after class, cannot learn the real knowledge just by rote memorization and coping with the exam. I advocate listening carefully to lectures in class, clarifying basic concepts, and doing more exercises after class. Doing exercises can deepen understanding, integrate and integrate, and exercise the ability to think about problems and solve problems. If you can't do a single exercise, you don't really understand it; even if you do all the exercises, it doesn't necessarily mean that you understand them all, because sometimes you're just making up formulas. If you know where you know where you understand, and where you don't understand, you can still try to understand it, and at this point, you can do less exercises. The so-called "knowing is knowing, not knowing is not knowing, is knowing", this is the truth.

A student, through years of listening to lectures, learned some basic knowledge, mastered some basic learning methods, and mastered the tools (including the tools of words and experiments), you can delve into it yourself, a book from beginning to end in order, you can always understand. Some people become self-taught, and there is this truth in it.

Further, at a certain point, you may not have to read books, because the books in the world are always unfinished, not to mention that many books are only for people to study, not for people to read. A person's memory is limited, and he can't always turn himself into a walking library. At this time, you must learn to look up books, and once you want to use them, you can check them. In the process of solving a problem, you need some kind of knowledge, so go to a certain book to look up and find the chapters you want to read. When you encounter something you can't understand, you turn it forward without having to read the whole book chapter by chapter from beginning to end. Obviously, the basis of the search is to read the books, the expors, and the non-intensive reading also. If you "close your eyes" and can "see" what a certain book says in a certain part, and when you want to use it, you can "hand it", then you don't have to read it in advance and memorize it.

The development process of reading books, which is from hearing and seeing to being used, in the words of the image, is the process of "reading the book thinner and thinner". We should grasp the essence of a book when we read it, and the remaining problem is to connect with reality, apply it repeatedly, and practice it is clever.

So, how do we understand whether we understand a problem or not? In fact, the so-called "understanding" we usually have a very different degree. When you understand a problem more thoroughly and comprehensively, you will admit that you did not really understand the problem in the past. Now, do you really understand? There may also be a situation of "looking after the present, and looking at the past as it is". Therefore, "understanding" has a process of continuous deepening. Understand or not understand, only relatively speaking. This is also the principle of "learning and then knowing enough".

Everyone should explore the right reading method for themselves, to discover their own strengths from reading, and then to carry forward their own strengths. Some people have the best effect of reading in the morning, and some people have the best effect of reading at night; some talents are quick-witted and quick-sighted, while others are very serious and rigorous, calm and calm in the face of things; some people have strong hands-on ability, and some people have good logical thinking. In short, everything in the world is varied, and there are thousands of differences between people, although the same teacher teaches, the same class, but the people who are trained are always various, and they will never be cast by a mold, like a factory product, completely the same look.

In the final analysis, reading is mainly on their own, of course, it is good to have a good teacher, without a good teacher, a person can also find a suitable reading method for himself and read the book well. I don't mean to say that the teacher can not be absent, the teacher's guidance is very important. However, even if there is a good teacher, if you do not go through your own efforts, do not rely on your own hard work, do not rely on yourself to explore and create, a person can not become a talent.

Today, in the period of rapid development of science and technology, natural science and social science are even more inseparable, intersecting with each other, and many marginal disciplines have emerged. Therefore, science and engineering students should read some liberal arts books. Similarly, liberal arts students should also read some science and engineering books. Science and engineering students can only understand both natural science knowledge and some social science knowledge, both their own professional knowledge and general knowledge of other disciplines, so as to meet the requirements of modern society.

02

Doing a good job in teaching is the teacher's vocation. If a university teacher wants to do a good job in teaching, in addition to having real talent and practical learning, he must also be bold, second, he must be less and more refined, and third, he must be good at inspiring students and identifying talents.

First of all, we must be bold, and young and middle-aged teachers should pay special attention to this. Some comrades with a long teaching experience, rich teaching experience, and good teaching results must have such an experience, that is, in a sense, lecturing is a kind of scientific speech, and teaching is a performing art. If a teacher goes to the podium, is restrained, swallows, reads according to the script, or always copies the blackboard and deduces the formula with his back to the student, then he must call people to take a nap. A good teacher should be like an actor, and when he goes to the podium, he must "enter the role" and "have no one in sight", on the one hand, he must use his own words to tell the things in the book; on the other hand, you can "dance with your hands" and "dance with your eyebrows" and give a colorful lecture. In this way, students will be attracted by the look in your eyes and unconsciously enter the artistic conception of exploring the mysteries of science. How can this be done? This requires that you must really grasp the entire content of the course you want to teach, that is, to be able to integrate and use it freely, and to be able to be detailed and concise in your lectures, long and short, from beginning to end, and from end to end; you can spend a year explaining in detail, and you can also finish in a month. At this time, it is like an acrobat playing with the ball in his hand, throwing up and falling, endlessly changing, calm, and handy. To do this, you must know and understand much more broadly and deeply than you have to talk about. My personal experience is that lectures cannot be prepared and taught now, and it is necessary to speak only if there is no need to prepare, but not to speak if it needs to be prepared.

Only when teachers are proficient in the courses they teach and can speak in their own words can they achieve chairman Mao's "less but finest" and in-depth and simple explanations. Honestly, if you only talk from the book, you talk for an hour, and the students read it for half an hour. A good teacher, although he has written lecture notes and books, will not fully follow the books or lecture notes he has written when he lectures, he only needs to tell the most wonderful parts. What is the rationale for this? For example, writing a book is similar to writing a novel, and teaching is similar to acting. To adapt a novel into a play, it is only three or five acts, seven or eight scenes. From the end of the previous act to the beginning of the next act, many things are skipped in the middle, and at the beginning of the next act, as soon as a few words are explained, the audience knows what plot was skipped in the middle, and there is no need to move everything to the stage. Moving to the stage is always the most wonderful passage, the scene that can move people the most and needs artistic performance the most.

To teach well, you must also understand your students. After class, talk to students casually, "oral test", less than half an hour, you can ask from the beginning to the end, students grasp the depth of classroom knowledge to know, the teacher's lecture will be targeted, the effect will be much better. Now some teachers do not understand the students, and they cannot distinguish the degree of the students they teach; before the class, they copy the east and the west, and the class is full of water, although they have been teaching for many years, the effect will not be good.

A good teacher should be good at inspiring students, good at identifying talents, and teaching according to their aptitudes. When you go to the podium to talk about a basic concept, you have to play it, you have to inspire students to think, to give an example, so that it can be fascinating. How did this problem come about, how was it cleverly solved, what problems are similar to it, and what problems have not been solved? This is what we often call "heuristic teaching", which can lead students to victory step by step, lead students to the road of climbing the peak of science and technology, and make people's ambitions bigger and bigger. Now the college students have good quality and are willing to work hard, men want to be Einstein, women want to be Marie Curie, they all want to win glory for the country, contribute to the four modernizations, and we as teachers should do our best to help them grow. If a young person is admitted to a university, due to teaching reasons, one year, two years, three years have passed, and his ambition is not getting bigger and bigger, but getting smaller and smaller, from vigorous upward to cowering, then we are the wrong people, sorry for young people, sorry for the party and the country. This is what we as teachers and school-run people should be very vigilant about.

03

Many students are ready for graduate school, and some may be assigned directly to research institutes after graduating from university. It is often asked: What are the characteristics of scientific research work? What should people who are engaged in scientific research have?

I believe that the biggest feature of scientific research work is to explore the unknown, and the significance of scientific research results is also in this. Engels said: "Science is to study what we do not know." (The Collected Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 3, p. 541) Scientific research work refers to those that ultimately have an academic innovation, a technological creation, that is, a theoretical or experimental innovation. The so-called innovation is that you are the first to solve a problem in an unknown field or thing, and the results of the research should be that no one has ever had before, and can be repeated by others; the views obtained should be that no one has ever put forward and can be gradually accepted by others. In short, the results of scientific research work are entirely created by yourself and the collective of research work on the basis of predecessors.

Therefore, people engaged in scientific research must be trained and have the guidance of a mentor, and they must have two academic points, the first is to be able to ask questions, and the second is to be good at solving problems.

First of all, you should put forward new questions in the field you are engaged in, on the basis of the work of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign predecessors, that is, to find a suitable research topic. This topic should be solved in a short period of time through efforts, not the kind of problem that has not been solved after ten or twenty years of effort. This is one of the important markers that distinguish between beginner, intermediate and senior researchers. Junior personnel are to complete a certain research work in the field and selected topics pointed out to him by others; intermediate personnel can find a more suitable research topic and solve it independently; senior personnel should have the ability to guide research work in addition to their own creative work, and can point out a suitable field or topic for others. Therefore, it is important for a graduate student or a college student who has just joined the work force to find a good mentor. What kind of mentor is it to find? Is it older, or is it a little younger? I say that each has its own strengths and weaknesses. The young tutor himself is doing research work intensely, what you should do, the tutor has already arranged, maybe a year and a half to produce results, which is beneficial to the growth of a graduate student. However, since you have only participated in part of the research work, although the results have been produced and you and your supervisor have jointly published a paper, you may not fully understand the mystery or its profound significance. If you are abroad, your mentor may use you as a labor force, and you may not be able to repeat it when you return home. Conversely, if the tutor is old, he is very busy, can only give you a direction, many specific difficulties you have to overcome on your own, the results may be slower, but you can exercise your ability to work independently. Another advantage of dealing with such a mentor is that most of the people who deal with him are contemporary masters Hongru, you work there, they come to visit, nod, shake hands, ask questions and answers, can be inspired and encouraged, enhance your confidence in overcoming difficulties, and help to break through difficulties in research work.

Second, scientific researchers are required to be good at problem-solving. Creation, in fact, is a process of overcoming difficulties. You can overcome this difficulty, you solve the problem, there is something new, that is, you have innovated. It's the same whether it's the natural sciences or the social sciences. To do scientific research work, there will always be some difficulties, there is no difficulty, what else do you want to study? The more difficulties you overcome, the more important the problems you solve and the results you get, and the greater your innovation. Therefore, when we talk about whether a person can do research work independently, we talk about whether he has the ability, determination and confidence to overcome difficulties. A person's ability is exercised in constantly overcoming difficulties. To cultivate people is to cultivate the ability to overcome difficulties. Whether a person can engage in scientific research or not depends not on how much he reads, but on whether he has the ability to overcome difficulties.

What makes it a first-class scientific research job? First of all, the research topic must be unique in the vast unknown field of science; second, there is no ready-made method to solve the problem, it must be conceived by oneself; finally, the embodiment of this method, the tools used to solve the problem, that is, the instruments and equipment for experiments, must be designed and created by oneself, not from where the money can be bought. If we can do this, we can say that our scientific research work is first-class.

In universities, scientific research must be closely integrated with teaching. We now need to do a good job in scientific research, and we need to do a good job in teaching. Teaching and research are mutually reinforcing. A university should become a teaching and research center with a focus on teaching. The person who teaches must do scientific research at the same time, or have done scientific research work before. People who are engaged in scientific research should also teach some books and have more contact with young people, which can help you think more about some problems.

A teacher has done a good job in teaching, scientific research has done a good job, and due to long-term accumulation, at a certain time, he must write books by himself. It can be said that writing a book is a summary of teaching and scientific research work. Writing a good book, especially a textbook, is of great significance. If you want to write a good book, you should innovate and write your own style, and you must not copy it from east to west, cut and paste, and piece it together. Writing a book is like a bee making honey and a silkworm spitting silk. Bees harvest nectar, which, after brewing themselves, become pure and luscious honey. Silkworms eat mulberry leaves, which, after digesting themselves, turn into crystalline silk. Picking flowers and making honey can be said to be eclectic, spitting silk cocoons, and truly "one breath". So, how do you write "your own style"? It is to be as human as it is. In addition to numbers, formulas, and tables, try to talk about the problem in your own words. When others read a book you've written, it's as if they hear you talking. Young and middle-aged teachers should boldly write books and work in this direction.

In short, for a person to achieve something, he must concentrate, study hard, and even sacrifice. The French novelist Maupassant said: "A man who promises himself to scholarship no longer has the right to live in the same way as ordinary people." ”

This article was originally published in People's Education, No. 11, 1980. At the request of the editorial board of Red Flag Magazine, it was revised and published in Red Flag Magazine No. 1, 1984. This article is selected from Red Flag magazine.