[Editor’s note]What subjects were there in the college entrance examination 60 years ago? How was the postgraduate exam conducted 40 years ago? The Paper interviewed Mr. Zhang Liangsheng, a researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and asked him to talk about two "big exams" in his life and his experiences and anecdotes in high energy physics research.
Zhang Liangsheng was born in June 1939 in Wuxi, Jiangsu. He participated in the college entrance examination in 1957 and entered the nuclear physics major of Nankai University. In 1978, he was admitted to the first postgraduate after the resumption of college entrance examination, and entered the Institute of High Energy Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he studied under Professor Zhang Wenyu, the founder of high energy experimental physics in China. Mr. Zhang Liangsheng devoted his life to the experimental research of high-energy physics in China.
Zhang Liangsheng is being interviewed.
Learn with one heart
Our family was very poor before liberation. My father was an apprentice at the age of 13 and worked as a clerk in a grocery store. Eldest brother is also about 13 years old (as an apprentice); The second brother is a little older and became an apprentice at the age of 16. After liberation, my father spent some money on a small stall, selling some soy sauce, salt and so on. He wanted to get rich.
My father asked me to inherit his career and run a small stall after I graduated from primary school. He taught me how to purchase goods, how to keep accounts and how to use abacus. I said I wouldn’t do this, but I had to go to school. Finally, my father and I reached an agreement. He said that if you were admitted to Wuxi No.1 Middle School, you would go to school. If you failed, you would work with me. No.1 Middle School is a public school, and the quality is very good. It doesn’t cost any money to get into No.1 Middle School, and there are state grants. As a result, I was admitted, and my father said, then go to school. At this time, it was just liberated, and tuition was free. Moreover, I applied for a grant after I went to school and went to high school.
I study very hard in middle school, and I like to study hard at ordinary times. I read my brother’s middle school physics book in primary school and was very interested. Once a classmate pulled a roller to repair the playground. The roller got stuck in the pit and couldn’t be pulled. He asked me what to do. I said you turned it upside down, pulled it back, and then jerked it forward and rushed over. They did it according to my method.
I took the college entrance examination in 1957, which was the most difficult one before the "Cultural Revolution". I was very stuck, and I volunteered before the exam. I’m afraid I won’t get into Tsinghua Peking University, so I’m conservative and applied for Nankai University. When I was in high school, I chose science. I took seven courses in Chinese, mathematics, foreign languages, politics, physics, chemistry and biology in the college entrance examination, and I got 96 points in physics. If I applied for Peking University, I could get into it.
In 1957, Zhang Liangsheng was photographed when he graduated from high school.
I studied nuclear physics in the physics department of Nankai University for five years. At that time, universities were all five years. Graduated in 1962, then stayed in school to tutor the basic course of nuclear physics, and then came to Lanzhou University, where he was promoted from a teaching assistant to a lecturer.
Want to go to Lanzhou to do something.
On October 16, 1964, our country exploded the first atomic bomb. At that time, the Ministry of Higher Education had planned to concentrate on two places in the north to engage in nuclear physics and radiochemistry, one was the Department of Physics of Peking University, and the other was the Department of Modern Physics of Lanzhou University, because Lanzhou was in the northwest and close to the nuclear test site. The Ministry of Higher Education intends to move some majors in nuclear physics and radiochemistry from Nankai University and Shandong University to the Department of Modern Physics of Lanzhou University.
Nankai took active action. In the summer of 1965, all the teachers, students and equipment of nuclear physics and radiochemistry were moved to Lanzhou. In order to move these equipment, the Ministry of Railways also specially prepared a special train, and the whole train was loaded with instruments and equipment.
There are about 100 students and teachers in the two classes going to Nankai. When moving, let everyone go home first, and then go to Lanzhou to concentrate, so everyone will arrive in Lanzhou early and late. I arrived in Lanzhou on August 23rd, and I was the first one to arrive in Lanzhou. At that time, I was in a state of mind, hoping to see what Lanzhou was like, hoping to do something in Lanzhou.
At that time, the whole country was preparing for war, and Lanzhou University had professional knowledge and technical conditions. The Lanzhou Military Region hoped to equip the PLA with some equipment for detecting nuclear radiation. The two sides hit it off, and we helped them to make a device called "automatic gamma ray alarm device". After the nuclear explosion, the gamma rays would whir to a certain extent, and the response was not bad. Later, a "automatic gamma ray recorder" was further developed, which was a little more advanced. It will record the intensity of gamma rays after the nuclear explosion by itself, and it has a wide range. It has four gears and will automatically shift gears as a daily monitor in the chief’s room to see if the radiation exceeds the standard. Later, these two devices won four awards at the National Science Conference in 1978, one was the Science Conference Award, the other was the Ministry of Chemical Defense, the Gansu Provincial Science and Technology Progress Award, and the other was the Lanzhou Military Region Award.
The other is to participate in nuclear tests. I won’t say much about this, but I have to keep it a secret. At that time, I also went to the proving ground. The school sent two people, one was me, who was engaged in nuclear physics, and the other was engaged in radiochemistry, both of whom were from Nankai University. However, we didn’t wear radiation masks, long boots and lead clothes like others, and after finishing half a bucket of sweat, it wasn’t that bad. We just tested gamma rays in the house, which was still a certain distance from the central area of the nuclear explosion, and it wasn’t as hard as their first line.
I also went to factories and rural areas to attend classes while taking part in labor. At that time, I chose three teachers, and I was one of them. I took a class of students to Xi ‘an 262 Factory to "open a school", where I gave them technical lessons. After I came back, the factory sent people to Lanzhou and invited me to give lectures to the students of 721 University in their factory. 721 University was very common at that time, which was equivalent to an enterprise university. Because enterprises should have their own technical talents, in order to cultivate talents, they chose some workers from the factory, did not study full-time, and hired teachers from outside to respond to Chairman Mao’s "721 instruction" and learn to work, learn agriculture and learn the army.
The level of students of workers, peasants and soldiers is uneven, some don’t understand, some don’t have enough to eat, so we should take care of everyone when teaching and be relatively relaxed when graduating. Teachers are also urging teachers to learn, so I have never given up my major. Moreover, in the late period of the "Cultural Revolution", the atmosphere on campus began to love reading. There are also some old intellectual families. Although the state does not attach importance to it, there are still some wishes and practical actions for children to learn. There is a kind of person who always has a desire to pursue knowledge no matter what social environment.
I also keep a hope that one day the country will be normal, and it can’t go on like this forever. There has been no enrollment for ten years. What will the country do after that? How can we do it when everyone is illiterate? I think the normal enrollment of college entrance examination will be resumed one day.
The First Postgraduate Examination after the Cultural Revolution
At the beginning of 1978, I was taking part in a nuclear test in our country when I knew I wanted to recruit graduate students. There were many people who took part in the nuclear test that time, and everyone communicated with each other. I heard the news of recruiting graduate students, but I didn’t know it in detail. Because the national college entrance examination for undergraduates was resumed in 1977, it was not surprising at all to get the news of resuming postgraduate recruitment, which was expected.
The Admissions Office in Lanzhou is located in a school in the city. I learned that it is really necessary to recruit graduate students, and the age range has expanded to 40, and my age is also included. I am very happy and feel that I have finally had a chance after waiting for so many years. The recruitment method is basically the same, that is, the process of registration, written examination and re-examination.
I came back and prepared an inch of photos, so I went to register. When you register, you should give the photo to the Admissions Office. After that, it will be posted. I went to see it, and it has my name, so that the formal registration is successful. After I signed up, I got an admission ticket, which I still have.
Admission ticket
There is basically no time to review before the exam. On the one hand, I have to work, and on the other hand, I have two children to take care of. It is because of my physical skills in college and my interest to take the exam. After the "Cultural Revolution", the country was not ready for the first postgraduate exam, but just wanted to open it, so there was neither an exam outline nor exam materials, and they were all in a hurry.
The formal exam is also in the school where I signed up. It seems that there is only one test center in Lanzhou, and there are only twenty or thirty people in an examination room. I am one of the oldest in it. I remember that my position is next to the north wall, the penultimate row. The exam is a table for one person, which is relatively apart to prevent looking at each other. There are two or three invigilators, the admission ticket is on the table, and the invigilators should check the photos so as not to be replaced by others.
In the middle of the exam, everyone is generally more disciplined and cherish this opportunity. During the "Cultural Revolution", some people basically lost everything they studied and did something else. Even if you asked him to take the exam, he didn’t have the heart to take it. However, there are still a small number of people who haven’t left their studies for so many years and hope to resume the exam one day. These people who took the exam basically belong to this category, that is, they usually study hard and have some foundations, so it is not easy to have such an opportunity, so they didn’t cheat in the exam.
I’m not too nervous during the exam. I think I’ll do whatever I get in the exam. I want to keep my mood relaxed. At that time, I took three exams, one political course, one foreign language course and one specialized course. My specialized course was high-energy physics, and I got 95 points.
I felt very uncomfortable when I took the physics exam. I still remember the general content, saying that there was a ball, and particles were emitted from the surface of the ball, and at the same time the ball fell. I asked how long it would take for the ball to fall in a vacuum. I think the conditions of this question are confused. If particles are sprayed in one direction, just like jets or rockets, they are different from spraying in all directions. If particles are sprayed in all directions, it is necessary to know how big, how much and how fast the particles are, and the results are different. These conditions were not given, so I simplified it at that time. After the exam, I always thought that there was something wrong with this question, so I wrote a letter to Gao Neng Institute, in which I wrote my calculations and some ideas. When I went to the High Energy Institute for a second interview, I heard that this question was cancelled. They might think it was reasonable after reading my letter. This question was simply left out, so I asked where I was wrong. They checked it for me and said that I didn’t have a particularly big mistake, that is, one point was deducted. Anyway, there were some omissions. In some places, the answer was incomplete, not a big problem, and finally I got 95 points.
The political examination is mainly about current events, such as the destruction of the Gang of Four, which brought the national economy to the brink of collapse. It was mainly based on the accumulation of reading newspapers and listening to the radio at ordinary times. At that time, everyone paid close attention to some political trends and knew about general state affairs.
There are some questions in the English exam that are similar to Shakespeare’s translation, and there are no textbooks, that is, I always read some English materials, and I go to attend the English class at school, and I read some physics journals in English, so I have never abandoned them. Besides, it was not difficult to do the first exam in good conscience.
After the written test, I wasn’t sure whether I could get in. At that time, the institute of high energy recruited 20 people, but hundreds of people signed up and later told me to go to Beijing for a second interview. At this time, I was a little sure in my heart. At that time, it happened that my wife was steaming steamed buns. I grabbed two steamed buns and left with a bag of paper, because the two steamed buns were still hot and covered, and I had diarrhea after eating them.
During the interview, I was asked why I took the postgraduate exam, why I took the high-quality college exam, and what I had done before. I chose the high-energy physics major of Chinese Academy of Sciences. One reason is that after I stayed in Nankai University, I was sent to the Institute of High Energy for a period of time. After that, I hope to go to the Institute of High Energy in the future. Another reason is that after the "Cultural Revolution", Deng Xiaoping made up his mind to grasp high-energy physics, and found more than 100 high-energy physics students from all over the country, and concentrated on recruiting them to Beijing, which was unprecedented in history, because it was very difficult to enter Beijing, but later I couldn’t be directly transferred to Beijing, so I had to enter the Institute of High Energy Studies of the Chinese Academy of Sciences by examination. I just like physics and want to study it all my life.
Later, someone asked me if you would like to be a graduate student of Director Zhang Wenyu, and I said of course I would. Zhang Wenyu is the first director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, and he has done pioneering work in muon atomic physics in the world. When Li Zhengdao and Yang Zhenning won the Nobel Prize, the state sent him to Sweden to do their work, and Yang Zhenning also publicly stated that Zhang Wenyu was his mentor.
Shortly after the interview, I received a letter saying that you have been officially admitted as a graduate student of Professor Zhang Wenyu. I was very excited after receiving the letter. I used to hear and see it in the illustrated newspaper on the radio. Now the relationship is so close, I went to the reference room of our department to find the relevant pictures. People’s Pictorial has a picture of Mr. Zhang Wenyu. I studied it for a long time and thought about it. I was very happy at that time.
In the summer of 1981, Zhang Liangsheng and his tutor Professor Zhang Wenyu (right) took a group photo in front of the main building of High Energy Institute.
When Lanzhou University took the exam as a lecturer, five people were admitted to each applicant. On September 29th, Lanzhou University held a school committee, which was equivalent to the highest-level meeting. At the meeting, it was discussed that five people were admitted to graduate schools, and Lanzhou University, as a school, would not let people go. Finally, it was considered that this was a major national policy and agreed to let people go and study with pay.
I joined the work in 1962, and by 1978, I had been waiting for 16 years. I was 39 years old when I took the exam. This was a very rare opportunity, and I seized it. By the second year, I was stuck.
Graduate student with Mr. Zhang Wenyu
After I arrived in Beijing, I studied basic courses first. I was old and my brain was failing. It was very difficult to learn. Other students were playing outside, so I studied in the house. People came back to see me studying there after playing, always sitting, always studying.
After finishing the basic course, I did my graduation thesis. At that time, there was no high-energy accelerator in our country, so it was not necessary to do high-energy physics experiments. Mr. Zhang Wenyu suggested that I do the work of high-energy detector-multi-wire detector, which is to detect the tracks of microscopic particles invisible to the naked eye.
Professor Zhang Wenyu particularly emphasized the need to do experiments. He said that "experiments are the basis of theory and the source of knowledge". He himself published an article in People’s Daily stressing the importance of experiments. Don’t sit there all day dreaming and don’t do practical things. He particularly emphasized this point. According to Zhang Wenyu’s teaching, I started from the basic things, including how to punch holes, how to draw wires, how to glue, how to package, how to ventilate, how to measure, how to record data, and finally analyze and write papers. These are all done by myself, and the experimental results are published in High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics.
On this basis, I also quantitatively explained a new international experimental result, that is, the experimental group directed by Professor Xia Pake, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1992, used the "multi-step avalanche chamber" filled with argon gas to let a high-intensity charged particle beam pass through it and make it run at a high counting rate, thus obtaining the breakdown data of the "multi-step avalanche chamber" when it was running at a high counting rate. They didn’t give a quantitative explanation for the result themselves, but only gave a qualitative explanation. I have a different view, so I established an equation for quantitative calculation. The calculation results confirmed my assumption that the decay life of the substances accumulated near the anode wire in the multi-step avalanche chamber is consistent with the metastable life of argon, which shows that the metastable state of argon plays a decisive role. After my explanation was published at home and abroad, an experimental group of Kyushu University in Japan made an experiment by experts to test whether my explanation was reasonable or that of Professor M.Atac in the United States. The experimental results supported my explanation and called it "Zhang Model".
In 1992, at CERN, Zhang Liangsheng (left) congratulated Xia Pake (right), winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Physics.
After the thesis defense, everyone thought that my level was higher than that of the master’s degree. An international experimental result was not explained correctly. I explained it quantitatively, but it was not appropriate to give it to my doctor directly, because our high-energy institute trained experimental high-energy physics, and I engaged in detectors, which are also in the category of high-energy physics, but there are still some differences when we talk about it carefully. The institute wanted me to continue my PhD, but my wife and I were separated, and I still had a child at that time. This situation made me stay for a few more years, which was really not good. I told the company that it was difficult to separate at home. So he graduated in 1981 and assigned work according to his master’s degree.
Dedicated to the research of high-energy physics all his life.
There have been many schemes or ideas for high-energy accelerators in China. There is a saying called "eight ups and seven downs", one of which was presided over by Premier Zhou during the Cultural Revolution. The scheme was put forward, and all the money was available, and it was ready to be done. As a result, the Gang of Four made trouble and failed to make it. It was called "eight ups and seven downs".
In 1978, Deng Xiaoping made up his mind to do it, and put forward a plan, namely the ring accelerator, which made a name for itself. After exploring the terrain in the Ming Tombs, he dismounted. The reason for dismounting this time was that the pace was too big and the national economy could not support it.
Later, Professor Li Zhengdao proposed an electron-positron collider to accelerate positrons and negative electrons respectively and focus them on one point for collision. Of course, the collision is worse than hitting a static target, and the electron itself is relatively small in mass, which is relatively easy to do. Everyone agrees to use the electron collision method. Finally, this project was completed. The state awarded a grand prize and held an award ceremony in Huairentang, Zhongnanhai. I was one of the winners in it, and the certificate was signed by Premier Li Peng at that time.
Zhang Liangsheng’s award certificate
In 1984, Professor Ding Zhaozhong came to China to recruit students to engage in high-energy physics experiments in the Mark-Jay Group in West Germany. Ten people were found in the high-energy institute and asked to review before taking the exam. Two of them did not take the exam, and only one of the remaining eight people was admitted. Later, I recruited another batch, and this time I was recruited, and I was admitted alone; Later, I took the exam twice, and two more people were admitted. Ding Zhaozhong took several of our admitted students to Beijing Hotel for an interview, which was mainly about high-energy experimental physics. He asked me about "proton decay", and I replied that according to the "grand unification" theory, "baryon number" and "lepton number" are no longer conserved quantities, so protons can decay. Only by answering this sentence, he felt satisfied. He asked his mind to be clear and not verbose. The more you talk, the more confused you are, which means that you don’t understand. Simply point out the most critical points and he will know that you know the problem. So I went to West Germany in 1985.
In 1985, Zhang Liangsheng (first from the right) took a group photo with Ding Zhaozhong (second from the right) in the MARK-J group.
At the end of 1992, I was once again sent to work in a European nuclear research center for more than a year. After I came back, I worked in a high-energy institute until I retired. After I finished my studies, I made a contribution to my country.
High-energy physics is widely used in reality, and the Internet is one of them. At CERN, there was a group mainly engaged in the transmission of high-energy data. On this basis, a concept of high-energy network was gradually developed, and this concept gradually became the Internet. With the advice and help of Professor Li Zhengdao, the Internet established by our country with foreign countries through the Institute of High Energy is also for the purpose of transmitting high-energy experimental data. With this foundation, our country has invested heavily in developing the Internet, and China has a large population, a large base and a scale effect, so the Internet has developed rapidly in China, which is still very advanced internationally. Our country’s high-energy physics is now in the international leading position in some aspects.
In retrospect, taking the first postgraduate exam after the resumption of the college entrance examination was an opportunity for me to change my fate, and it was also the only opportunity for many students after ten years of interruption of the exam during the Cultural Revolution. Ten years of "Cultural Revolution", ten years of fault, talent training was abandoned in the "Cultural Revolution". Restoring the college entrance examination made everyone feel that there was hope and a way. They could gain a sense of accomplishment through their own efforts and have their own glory in it at a certain stage. This is a good thing that benefits the country and the people, and it is a major move after the country is on the right track.
If a country wants to stand on the top of the world, it must have world-class leading talents. Everything in exam-oriented education is to cope with exams, cramming and memorizing, which stifles learning enthusiasm. We should encourage everyone to study hard, have their own opinions, give full play to their strengths, be active and creative, have a strong thirst for knowledge and interest, and don’t become an examination machine.
