Chapter 115 - 112: Marie Skłodowska Curie
Seeing that Wang Hao had "seen the light," Li Dong smiled with great satisfaction. ’This is the joy of passing on knowledge!’
He then turned and opened his mobile workstation.
He calculated the time. It had already been several days since he submitted his paper on the dimensionality reduction of the Riemann Algorithm to *Mathematics Computing*.
Given the notoriously unpredictable review cycles of top international journals, the initial review alone should have taken at least one or two weeks.
But a faint flicker of anticipation still lingered in his heart.
’What if? What if I ran into an academic editor who could recognize its value and sent it directly for external review after the initial screening?’
Li Dong logged into the AMS’s Editorial Manager submission system.
The page refreshed.
When he got a clear look at the status bar on the page, Li Dong froze.
The status, which should have been [Submitted to Journal],
had now skipped two steps and turned a dazzling green.
[Under Review]!
For a moment, Li Dong was completely dazed.
He knew that after a manuscript is submitted, it first has to go through a technical and plagiarism check by an Editorial Assistant.
Only after it passes the plagiarism and formatting checks does the status change to [With Editor].
And only when the academic editor reviews the abstract and introduction, deems the article to have significant academic value, and decides against a Desk Reject—choosing instead to invite peer experts for review—does the status finally change to [Under Review]!
’It’s... already been sent for external review?’
Li Dong was still astonished.
He had originally thought that for a manuscript from an author with the title of "Undergraduate," submitted to a top-tier journal in the world of Computational Mathematics, the editor would give him a hard time during the initial technical review alone.
’Looks like I really ran into an expert who knows their stuff!’
What he didn’t know was that the expert he had encountered wasn’t just any ordinary editor, but the true titan of the Computational Mathematics world, the chaired professor of the Department of Applied Mathematics at Brown University, Su Qiwang!
From the shadows of his bunk, Wang Hao happened to see Li Dong staring blankly at his screen.
"Brother Dong, what’s wrong?" Wang Hao asked weakly. "Did your code crash?"
Li Dong snapped back to his senses and replied subconsciously.
"Ah... it’s nothing. The paper passed the initial review. It’s been sent for external review."
"Oh, it passed. If it’s nothing, then—"
Wang Hao was about to give a perfunctory reply, but he suddenly realized what had been said halfway through his sentence...
"Holy shit! What did you say passed?"
He knew exactly which journal Li Dong had submitted to—*Mathematics Computing*!
Wang Hao recalled how he had also tried writing a paper on combinatorial mathematics in high school and submitted it to the domestic journal, *Computational Mathematics*.
And the result?
He received a rejection email in less than three days, without a single reviewer comment. It was shot down so completely there was nothing left.
Let alone a top international journal like the one Li Dong submitted to!
"It passed the initial review that fast? Straight to [Under Review]?"
Wang Hao swallowed hard, feeling that the blows he had suffered today were greater than all the ones from the past eighteen years of his life combined.
He silently retreated into the shadows of his bunk and drew the curtain.
"Just end me now. I can’t go on studying like this."
Li Dong was completely oblivious to the fact that his roommate’s spirit had been shattered once again.
’Since it passed the initial review, that means the underlying logic of my algorithm is solid in the eyes of an industry expert!’
’If there are no problems later on, not only will I be able to rake in research credits and a hefty cash prize from Yan University, but most importantly...’
Calculating the non-trivial zeros of the Riemann Zeta function was directly tied to increasing his permission level in the "Cyan Dragon Study Group"!
His current title was still [Group Leader (Intern)]. He had to keep calculating zeros to a higher order of magnitude!
’Relying on my mobile workstation, hitting the hundred-billion scale is already the physical limit. To challenge the world record of ten trillion or even a hundred trillion, I have to use a supercomputer!’
Li Dong’s mind raced as he calculated his options.
’Looks like I’ll have to make a trip to the School of Information Science and Technology or the Supercomputing Center in the next few days and apply for a computing node on Yan University’s "Weiming No.1" high-performance computing platform.’
However, Li Dong also had a faint suspicion.
This document from Gauss allowed him to increase his permission level. The underlying logic behind it was definitely not as simple as a contest of raw computing power.
Thinking of this, Li Dong closed his browser and opened the "Cyan Dragon Study Group" on WeChat.
He lurked in the group every day to see what these titans were talking about, hoping he could fleece some knowledge from them.
But as soon as he entered the group, Li Dong saw an ID that had never appeared before!
[Marie Skłodowska Curie]
If, in this group, Newton and Einstein were the insurmountable mountains of physics, and Mendeleev was the embodiment of truth in chemistry, then the person before him was the peerless empress who had forged a path right between those two divine peaks!
Two Nobel Prizes might not sound like much, right?
Wrong! She was the only person in human history to win the Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields, physics and chemistry—a true titan!
And what’s so impressive about messing with electricity? She dared to refine radium and polonium with her bare hands. To this day, more than a hundred years later, her manuscripts are still radioactive.
A remarkable woman who dedicated her entire life, and even her very being, to science!
At this moment, she was arguing with Mendeleev.
Li Dong thought he could fleece some more chemistry knowledge, but when he saw the content of their argument...
[Marie Skłodowska Curie]: Mr. Mendeleev, did you know? Pierre and I rode our bicycles along the country roads of France, the wind in our faces all the way to the coast of Brittany! That feeling of leaving everything behind, of measuring the earth with nothing but the rotation of your own two feet—that is true freedom and adventure!
[Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev]: Riding a bicycle? Madame, if you’ll pardon my saying so, that is not an adventure!
[Mendeleev]: A true adventure is to do as I do: ride a hot-air balloon and break right through the clouds! To face a total solar eclipse alone at an altitude of several thousand meters, or to build a heavier-than-air flying machine with your own hands!
[Mendeleev]: And by the way, I’m about to finish building the physical model from the flying machine blueprints provided by Lord Gauss! Now *that* is the ultimate romance for an explorer!
In most people’s minds, aren’t chemists just a bunch of nerds who stay in the lab shaking beakers?
Wrong. These guys are all fucking death-defying adventurers!
Certain chemical compounds, like high-concentration indole or certain thiols, are usually labeled with the following note:
[Has a fecal-like odor]
So, the question is... how did these chemists know that this stuff has a fecal-like odor?
And how did they know what feces even smell like in the first place?
The implications are terrifying!
However, Li Dong quickly focused on one of Mendeleev’s sentences.
"My flying machine is almost finished."
’The flying machine is almost finished?!’
Li Dong’s eyes sparkled.
Once Mendeleev succeeds in launching a heavier-than-air flying machine in that universe, then...
’Isn’t this another score?’
A thrill of excitement shot through Li Dong.
’Looks like I’ll have to keep a close eye on the group for the next couple of days.’
He yawned and glanced at the time.
’I have a big lecture for *Introduction to the Basic Principles of Marxism* this afternoon. I’ll take a nap first.’
Li Dong locked his phone, fell onto his bed, and prepared to take a quick nap.
...
[Marie Skłodowska Curie]: ...
[Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev]: ...
[Benjamin Franklin]: Heh heh, after all that build-up from you two...