There is always plenty of room at the top

2008.09.03

“There is plenty of room at the top -- but no place to sit down.” 是一句鼓励人乐观和力争上游的成语。

今天下午在UC Santa Barbara化学系和化工系做报告，题目是：New Opportunities in the Interface Studies with Nonlinear Spectroscopy。

这个报告是是美国国家科学基金会（NSF-US）的国际研究与教育合作项目PIRE-ECCI（PARTNERSHIP FOR INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH AND EDUCATION－ELECTRON CHEMISTRY AND CATALYSIS AT INTERFACES）的系列学术报告之一。PIRE-ECCI项目由美国UC－Santa Barbara大学和中国科学院大连化物所主持，也得到了中国国家自然科学基金会（NSFC）和中国国家科技部（MOST）以及中国科学院（CAS）的大力支持。作为参与者，我是第二次在UC Santa Barbara作PIRE-ECCI项目的学术报告。我上次的报告是2005年9月22日，是PIRE-ECCI项目的第一个报告。报告相关的信息和摘要可以在以下有关PIRE-ECCI Seminar的网页找到。

PIRE-ECCI Seminar信息链接：http://pire-ecci.ucsb.edu/seminars/Seminars.htm

有关PIRE-ECCI的博文《有朋自远方来》链接：http://www.sciencenet.cn/blog/user_content.aspx?id=3869

晚上和化学系的三位教授到Goleta海滩上的Beachside Bar Cafe一起晚餐。在Peter Ford教授的车上我和他谈到现在研究生普遍觉得学习和找工作的压力很大。Ford教授对我说：Why worry? There is always plenty of room at the top. There is always plenty of jobs for good people with good ideas.

我说: I fully agree. When I was graduate student at Columbia, quite many fellow students worried a lot about finding jobs. I just told myself that just try to be a good physical chemist. By the way, it is really interesting. I remember that Richard Feynman said that "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom". And now you say that "There is always plenty of room at the top."

Ford教授说：You know what. When I was undergraduate student at CalTech, Feynman taught us general physics, and our general chemistry was taught by Pauling. It was really fun.

Feynman《There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom》演讲链接：http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/feynman.html

Feynman的那句话，几乎所有做纳米研究的人都知道。但Ford教授的这句话，我不知道会有多少人知道。我也不知道有多少人会真正同意Ford教授的这句话。

不同意的Ford教授的人们可能会说：Too simple, too naive.

我择其善者而从之。