886 Rejected!

His growth wasn’t only limited to his academic abilities, but also his leadership and management skills of a scientific research team.

Lu Zhou had plenty of experience in being a leader.

As the chief designer of the Chinese controllable fusion project, he was well versed in this area.

However, this skill couldn’t be transferred to other people through teaching, only through experience.

Hou Guang sometimes thought that maybe the reason Lu Zhou decided to retreat from the front line was to give himself more room to grow.

Every time Hou Guang thought about this, he couldn’t help but shed a tear.

People in the academic community that gave opportunities to the less fortunate was a rare sight.

However, Academician Wang Zengguang, the chief engineer of the China National Nuclear Corporation, had a totally different opinion of Lu Zhou.

Lu Zhou cared about other people?

Maybe a little bit.

But that’s not the main reason!

Lu Zhou just isn’t interested in power, and he’s lazy!

Anyone who knew Lu Zhou knew that Lu Zhou never stayed in one field for long. Even when it came to mathematics, which was his favorite, he would often immediately jump into another field when his research came to a bottleneck.

This was obvious from his letter to the Communist Party of China, back when he was still the chief designer for the nuclear fusion project.

Lu Zhou clearly portrayed that, once controllable nuclear fusion was figured out, he would move onto something else.

Lu Zhou was too tired of being chief designer…

…

“Achoo!”

On the highway.

Lu Zhou was sitting in the backseat, admiring the view.

Wang Peng, who was driving the car, looked in the rearview mirror and spoke.

“Is it too cold?”

“No, it’s fine…” Lu Zhou rubbed his nose and turned his attention back to the printed thesis on his lap.

This thesis was the one Luo Wenxuan showed him last week.

However, even though it was the same thesis, he received this thesis from someone else other than Luo Wenxuan.

In fact, Lu Zhou didn’t want to read this thing; just from the abstract, he could tell that this was nothing more than a theoretical conjecture that didn’t solve any real-life problems. It couldn’t explain any unknown phenomenon and had close to no research value at all.

However, he didn’t expect Luo Wenxuan to actually submit it to PRL; moreover, PRL actually asked him to review the thesis.

Because of the double-blind review process, Luo Wenxuan didn’t know that his thesis was being reviewed by his boss.

Despite the possible conflicts of interest, Lu Zhou still accepted the review invitation from PRL. He printed out the thesis and began reading it on his drive back to his hometown.

Strictly speaking, even though there was still a week or two before Chinese New Year break, Lu Zhou planned on returning to his home town in a couple of days.

However, over the past few days, people often came to his office. Some were asking about exam marks, and some were giving him gifts. All these annoyed him.

Because this year’s exam was scheduled to be before the holidays, he had more visitors than usual.

Not to mention there were some faculty members who wanted to work for him.

Lu Zhou told He Changwen to mark the rest of the exam papers and decided to go home early for Chinese New Year.

As for why he was driving?

Having a car during the holidays was more convenient.

Actually he wanted to drive his sports car, but the small car really wasn’t suitable for the long journey. Per Wang Peng’s suggestion, they took the black sedan instead.

The sedan was much more comfortable and Lu Zhou could even lie down in the back. It was perfect for long distances. The Electric Purple was pretty useless, other than for showing off.

“He has a good understanding of Minkowski space theory, but his mathematics skills are… Is this guy really Witten’s student?”

It wasn’t just the mathematical calculations, but the thesis also had logical problems.

In the field of theoretical physics, mathematics was very important, but it wasn’t crucial.

Even scholars who only used basic mathematical tools could create new theories. For example, Frank Wilczek, who worked with Lu Zhou in the past, did profound research in the field of quark particles without a deep understanding of mathematics.

Physicists like Edward Witten, who created mathematical tools themselves and won the Fields Medal, were of course the minority.

Not only was the mathematics in Luo Wenxuan’s thesis incorrect, but it also contained logical fallacies. It was a miracle this thesis even went into the peer review stage.

Lu Zhou smiled and shook his head. He then wrote down a line on the bottom of the paper.

[Rejected]

Do you really think I would accept this thesis?

In your dreams.

Forget about all the problems in the thesis…

I said I would eat a table if this thesis was accepted; obviously, I’m not going to do that to myself.

Lu Zhou placed the thesis aside and looked at the view outside the window. He suddenly spoke.

“Where are we?”

Wang Peng, who was holding the steering wheel, replied, “We’re 10 kilometers from Jiangcheng.”

Lu Zhou nodded and suddenly remembered something.

“Speaking of which, the semiconductor industry cluster is in the suburbs of Jiangcheng, right?”

Wang Peng paused for a second and didn’t know why Lu Zhou was talking about this.

However, he still nodded and replied, “Yeah… I think it’s in the eastern suburbs of Jiangcheng.”

Eastern suburbs of Jiangcheng?

That’s where the new silicon valley is…

Lu Zhou remembered that Chen Yushan told him that the Huawei carbon-based semiconductor production and research center was near here. He suddenly said, “Let’s go take a look.”

“Ok.”

Without asking any questions, Wang Peng skillfully changed the lane and began driving toward the highway.

After driving Lu Zhou around for so many years, he was familiar with his personality.

Lu Zhou was always unpredictable.

Whether it was his research or his lifestyle.

Just like how he didn’t give Wang Peng any notice before he decided to go home early for the holidays.

Wang Peng was used to it.

However, even though Wang Peng was used to this, some people weren’t…

On the Jiangling highway exit, which was more than 200 kilometers away, a group of people waited in the cold while trembling in the wind…