On Innovative Thinking from Nobel Prize by Academician Ouyang Zhongcan

Guest Lecture

| 10/14/2015

On the night of October 13, 2015, academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences, theoretical physicist and Professor Ouyang Zhongcan was invited to the 36th SUSTC Lecture Hall of Science & China Academicians-Experts Tour Lecture and Symposium, and took discussions on 2014 Nobel Prize “From Microscope to Microscope” with our teachers and students. The symposium was presided by vice president Tang Tao.

Academician Ouyang Zhongcan

As a researcher of Institute of Theoretical Physics of CAS, the professor Ouyang Zhongcan was successively selected as academician of CAS in 1997, academician of the Third World Academy of Sciences in 2003 and the first international member of Japan Society of Applied Physics in China in 2015. He has mainly worked on bio membrane liquid crystal model theory in condensed matter physics, liquid crystal physics and application basic theory, and other researches.

Symposium site

· Fantastic innovative thinking

“As we all known that a scientist was stood out from scientific link at the opening ceremony of 2012 Olympic Games in London. He was not the scientific hero or the Nobel Prize winner from British, but the founder Tim Berners-Lee of World Wide Web. Here, I would like to talk the innovation from him”. Mr. Ouyang Zhongcan started the gate of innovative thinking with such a small story. Tim Berners-Lee, owing to the innovative thinking, invented the World Wide Web though in a physics laboratory. With the development of the microscope, the innovation vigor was burst out now and then. Academician Ouyang said: “From the first microscope invented by Leeuwenhoek to the first living cell observed with the microscope all certainly made us to watch a natural world more clearly. However, due to the Abbe limit, the resolution of the optical microscope cannot reach a new height; and over the past 100 years, the scientists broken this limit finally after sustained efforts. As a result, the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was presented to the microscope and this is what the breakthrough of the innovation. “

· Pragmatic scientific research

“Scientific research relies on not how many articles you delivered, but on what you do”, Ouyang Zhongcan continued. When talking the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics was presented to three Japanese, he expressed that was not out of his expectation and said this prize presentation embodied the craftsmanship in Japan and we all needed such spirit in scientific researches, e.g. Hiroshi Amano spoken to the media: “I don’t have any outstanding achievement, but just do 1500 experiments”. And another prize winner Isamu Akasaki was a real craftsman indeed”. Academician Ouyang mentioned: “Isamu Akasaki when as a freshman once heard from his professors that the blue ray was extremely difficult and those who dealt with the blue ray were doomed to be extraordinary; from that on, he kept these words in mind, could not stop thinking about the blue ray after graduation and eventually made his scientific research dream come true.”

· Valuable maker spirit

Speaking of the makers, Ouyang Zhongcan explained: “the founder of modern physics Albert Einstein was precisely a great maker; with no doctoral degree after graduation from college, he became a patent researcher for the sake of supporting a family; just during this period, he wrote four revolutionary thesis, playing significant foundation for modern physics. This is what the maker spirit means. “

During the interactive communication link of the lecture, President Chen Shiyi asked: “what we should think around the makers in Shenzhen and in SUSTC”. And academician Ouyang said: “my mission of this trip is for the makers; here in Shenzhen, a lot of conditions and a huge exploration space are provided for the makers, with which other cities cannot compare; besides, there are a lot of successful makers essentially in Shenzhen and they will bring as many makers as possible. As for SUSTC, under the strong support of the government, I believe SUSTC will create a bright future both in scientific researches and makers.”