Shadow of great britain

Without bold guesses, there can be no great discoveries.

——Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss

In the main auditorium of the University of Göttingen, the vaulted ceiling is painted with ancient Greek and Roman mythology patterns, and the wooden benches are neatly arranged, solemn and dignified. The sun shines into the hall through the tall stained glass windows, reflecting on the academic honor shields and portraits of historical figures on the wall, adding a sacred color to this century-old academic hall.

Professors in black robes, holding handouts and notes in their hands, are arriving one after another. The professors quickly found their familiar seats on the benches. They talked in groups of three or five in a low voice. Some were discussing the latest developments in their respective disciplines, while others were talking about the young Sir Arthur Hastings, the special representative of the country who had just taken office.

After the Frankfurt Garrison incident, professors generally believed that the Ministry of Education would send a traditional hard-line aristocrat to serve as the academic supervisor of the University of Göttingen. In fact, when they first learned about Sir Arthur Hastings' resume, the professors also thought that their previous speculation was indeed confirmed.

According to the description of British newspapers, before coming to the University of Göttingen, this young knight was once the most notorious police chief in Britain. During the British parliamentary reform in 1832, he once ordered to open fire on demonstrators. After he left Scotland Yard, many of the dark secrets during Arthur Hastings' tenure were gradually revealed.

Although no one could produce relevant evidence, the Fleet Street media in London insisted that Arthur Hastings had bought off hooligans to act as police informants during his tenure as director of the Police Intelligence Bureau, and opened the door for these criminals in various ways so that they could monitor the kind citizens of London from all aspects.

According to some local informants who wish to remain anonymous, Arthur Hastings, the villain, deserves to be charged with multiple felonies, including but not limited to: abusing his power to interfere in the bidding for the procurement of police equipment, retaliating against others, transferring money and political benefits to specific groups of people, interfering with judicial investigations by tampering with evidence and influencing witnesses, etc.

Of course, Fleet Street's evaluation of Sir Arthur Hastings is not all one-sided criticism.

The Times, in which the Rothschild family holds a stake, The Brit, the hottest fashion literary magazine in London, and The Economist, the most popular political economy magazine among the City of Finance bankers, are all media that support Sir Arthur Hastings.

The Times recently praised Sir Arthur Hastings as the greatest and most professional British policeman in the 19th century.

He made his debut with an impassioned speech, helping the British people end the dark history of the Bloody Code.

During the night of the London riots, he escorted the country through the last ray of darkness before dawn with extraordinary calmness and stability.

After the completion of the parliamentary reform, Arthur Hastings "dumped his clothes after the work was done, hiding his merits and fame".

He regarded high positions and generous salaries as dirt. Although the Ministry of the Interior repeatedly retained him, Sir Arthur Hastings resolutely resigned from the position of Assistant Commissioner of Police of the Royal Metropolitan Police and took the initiative to assume all the faults of the London Metropolitan Police for some radical actions on the night of the riots.

Inspector Ledley King of Scotland Yard burst into tears in an interview and said: "On the day the Sir left Scotland Yard, I begged him not to leave us, but the Sir just stood by the window with his hands behind his back and looked up at the sun. He told us: 'If someone must be responsible for this, I hope that person is me, and only me.'"

Senior police officers who are highly trusted by the public, such as Inspector Tony Eckhart, Inspector Tom Flanders and Inspector Thomas Plunkett, also confirmed to the Times reporter: "That's right."

Reporters of the Times were also heartbroken for the British public to lose such an outstanding police commander. They later launched a vote on Sir Arthur Hastings in the newspaper.

The final voting results showed that 50% of the voters wanted the Sir to return to Scotland Yard, and the remaining 50% demanded the executioner under the Tower of London to be hanged.

What's more interesting is that the reasons given by voters who demanded Arthur's return and those who demanded Arthur's execution were surprisingly consistent: everyone believed that Arthur Hastings was too capable.

However, whether Arthur Hastings was a capable and honest police officer or a capable executioner, he should have taken some action after taking office as the proctor of the University of Göttingen.

But what the professors didn't expect was that after the new proctor took office, he didn't make any big news, not even ordinary small news.

The only thing the professors knew was that on the first day of his appointment, Proctor Hastings was arrested by the Göttingen Police Department as a rioting student.

However, he did not retaliate against the police chief as the London media said, nor did he order strict punishment for the rioting students.

After a few days of calm, the professors learned from the law school professors that they occasionally saw the new proctor "military training" the problem student Bismarck on the school lawn.

Bismarck's name was well-known in Göttingen, and even professors from other colleges had heard of this guy.

So after learning the news, the professors who couldn't bear the loneliness would go to the law school for a walk in addition to teaching and research.

When these older professors wandered to the law school, they found that the news of Bismarck's "ruthless suppression" spread much faster among the student group than they did.

The traffic of the law school has increased dramatically in the past week, and there is a trend of replacing the cellar tavern of the city hall as the "most popular tourist attraction for students".

Although the beating of Bismarck is very popular with students, in the eyes of some old-school professors, the behavior of this new school supervisor is no different from that of ordinary students, and judging from his age, it seems to be true.

Although these professors who have gone through a lot of hardships to obtain teaching positions do not say it, they still have some complaints about the Ministry of Education's practice of airdropping new school supervisors.

Although the appointment procedures related to Sir Arthur Hastings are legal, they are not strictly in accordance with the appointment procedures of German university professors.

Just like the character of Germans, the appointment process of professors in German universities has always been famous for its rigor and meticulousness.

When a university appoints a subject professor, it generally goes through the following steps.

First, the school introduces the position and describes the value of the professor position to be recruited, and publishes recruitment advertisements in academic journals and news media for open recruitment.

Then, the school will also set up a special recruitment committee to be responsible for the relevant matters of this professor recruitment.

After receiving the application information of the job seeker, the committee verifies the applicant's qualifications and conducts pre-selection work, and conducts final interviews based on the pre-selection results.

Finally, the committee will recommend three candidates to the school based on the interview results. The president will have an appointment conversation with the candidates according to the ranking and decide who will be finally appointed.

Indeed, in the emerging field of electromagnetism, Arthur Hastings, a collaborator of Faraday, is absolutely qualified to take the teaching position at the University of Göttingen. Even if there is an open recruitment, the professors have no doubt that this young man can beat other competitors.

However, he has a flaw, that is, he is not a doctoral graduate. Only doctors can be professors, which is a hard rule of the University of Göttingen.

Although Sir Arthur Hastings' doctorate certificate had been sent to Göttingen by the University of London a few days ago, anyone with a discerning eye could tell that the certificate was reissued later.

Because it clearly stated that in view of Sir Arthur Hastings' outstanding contribution to the field of electromagnetism, the President of the University of London, Mr. Leonard Horner, decided to award him an honorary doctorate in physics.

For this reason, some professors privately speculated that the reason why the new dean had not held a teaching meeting until now was entirely because his honorary doctorate had not yet floated across the English Channel a few days ago.

In a sense, the professors guessed right, but they were only half right.

The other half of the reason was that Professor Gauss and Professor Weber were looking for Sir Arthur Hastings in Göttingen a few days ago, hoping that he would help guide the construction of telegraph lines and conduct in-depth academic exchanges in electromagnetism, mathematics and other fields.

Arthur originally thought that after getting rid of the French Academy of Sciences and coming to Göttingen, he had finally climbed out of the bottomless tunnel.

But what he never expected was that the University of Göttingen, which was in its heyday, could fight the French Academy of Sciences on its own.

Or to put it more bluntly, they only sent Professor Gauss to fight Poisson, Cauchy and others.

After all, this gentleman is the number one in Europe in the real sense. At the beginning, Arthur only carried the six departments and 23 police districts of Scotland Yard on his shoulders, but Gauss carried the mathematics community of France, Germany, Britain, Russia and even the whole of Europe and the world on his shoulders.

Amid the discussion of the professors, hard footsteps suddenly sounded outside the auditorium.

Sir Arthur Hastings, the new academic supervisor and special national representative of the University of Göttingen, walked slowly into the hall, and his appearance immediately attracted the attention of the professors.

As a 24-year-old young man, Arthur has a slender figure and a serious and majestic expression.

He was wearing a beautiful cycling suit, and he looked dusty, as if he had just come back from outside.

On the chest of his cycling jersey was the emblem of the Kingdom of Hanover, a symbol of national authority. The ribbon symbolizing honor swayed slightly with his steps, and every step seemed to declare his dual identity as a school supervisor and a national representative.

Arthur stepped on the wooden steps step by step. His steps were very hard. If you look at him at first glance, you would probably think he was an authentic German military nobleman, not a British lord who came from London.

Arthur stood in front of the podium, his eyes slowly swept across the entire hall, and then fixed on Professor Johann Herbart, the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy, who was familiar with him: "Can we start?"

Professor Herbart, who was the assistant to the academic supervisor, stood up and nodded slightly: "Except for Gauss and Weber and those who stayed in the capital for the meeting, all other professors are here."

"Huh?" Arthur pretended to be ignorant and asked: "Is there anything about Professors Gauss and Weber?"

"Professor Gauss has been responsible for leading the geodetic surveying work of the Kingdom of Hanover since 1816. The workload of this project is very large, so he has to travel every few days."

"I see." Arthur smiled and said, "That's a pity. I thought I would finally have a chance to meet this world-famous scholar today, but I didn't expect to miss it. But it doesn't matter. There will be opportunities in the future anyway."

Professor Herbart carefully wrote down Arthur's needs: "If you need to meet with Gauss, I will notify him to go to the Dean's Office as soon as he comes back. Electromagnetism is a new subject in the school. In order to get off to a good start, I think it is necessary to mobilize all current academic resources to give this subject a certain degree of preference."

When Arthur heard this, he hurriedly stopped and said, "I will go to see Mr. Gauss when he comes back. Scholars like him usually He must be very busy, I can't take up too much of his energy. "

"Don't worry about that."

Herbart put the pen into his jacket pocket, and the old scholar replied seriously: "Gauss told me before that he wanted to meet you. He said that Mr. Navi and Mr. Coriolis of the Paris Academy of Sciences wrote to him, saying that you solved the fluid mechanics equation that troubled Navi for a long time in Paris, and also played a great role in inspiring Mr. Coriolis's latest research. Mr. Gauss also encountered a problem recently, and he was thinking of discussing it with you. "

Arthur's face turned green when he heard this. He stood on the stage for a long time without saying a word: "I..."

But the professors in the audience exclaimed.

If they had doubts about Arthur's academic ability just now, then now, they only have praise left.

Everyone knows what a genius Gauss is. If even he recognizes the academic ability of Dean Arthur Hastings, then there is nothing wrong with the school giving him the position of electromagnetics professor.

In the eyes of these professors, Gauss's praise is much more important than a doctoral degree.

What is even more commendable is that a 24-year-old boy, who received Gauss's praise, was able to stand on the stage without changing his expression or being surprised, and was able to not be happy or sad because of things.

This calmness alone can show that this young man is indeed different from others.

The professors whispered: "This school supervisor is really not simple."