"Sure. Pretty standard questions." Song He scanned through them.
Xiang Xiaotong typed a reply, and the reporter immediately sent back an OK emoji.
At last, the Livestream Room showed an image of an elegant female reporter.
"Let's go in too," Song He said.
Xiang Xiaotong typed again. The computer camera turned on, and the two of them appeared together in the Livestream Room.
"Welcome, everyone, to the Nobel Prize exclusive interview livestream! We already have five million viewers in the Livestream Room, and the number is still rising!" the reporter said cheerfully. "Let's give a warm welcome to this year's Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine, Teacher Song He and Teacher Xiang!"
"Thank you! Welcome, everyone!" Xiang Xiaotong said with a bright smile.
Song He nodded as well. "Welcome, everyone!"
"First of all, congratulations to you both on winning the Nobel Prize!" the reporter said with a smile. "Did you expect to win the Nobel Prize beforehand? Was tonight's announcement a surprise to you, or was it within your expectations?"
Song He and Xiang Xiaotong exchanged a glance and spoke at the same time. "You go first."
"Then I'll go first?" they said in unison again.
They both laughed, and Song He decisively made the call. "You go first, then I'll speak."
"All right." Xiang Xiaotong nodded and looked seriously into the camera. "Personally, I was rather surprised. Not surprised that we won, but surprised by the reason we won."
"This year's award recognized your new discovery concerning the neuropeptide transmission network in the field of brain neuroscience," the reporter said. "Why did you find the reason so surprising?"
"Because the discovery was too minor!" Xiang Xiaotong said. "I even froze for a moment when I first saw it, and it took me quite a while to process it."
"We made this discovery several years ago, when the two of us spent a week in the laboratory casually working on it. It was an insignificant little finding. We published it in Cell almost as an afterthought. At the time, we never imagined it could win a Nobel Prize. We treated it as an ordinary paper."
"So I'm a little puzzled. We've clearly published more important discoveries, so why was the Nobel Prize given for this minor one?" Xiang Xiaotong said with a smile.
"I see!" the reporter said with a smile. "So is it possible that the two of you might win a second Nobel Prize in the future? After all, you still have more important discoveries."
"One is enough. Winning more wouldn't mean much," Xiang Xiaotong said with a smile.
"As far as I know, not every Nobel-winning discovery was painstakingly produced over a long period of time. Some were made easily in a short period," the reporter said, clearly having done her homework. "For example, Koichi Tanaka was merely a junior company employee responsible for electrical engineering research. His supervisor casually gave him an instrument for measuring the mass of biological macromolecules and asked him to work on it. With no foundation in the subject, he had to teach himself. He only had a rough grasp of it, but he pressed ahead anyway."
"At the time, the general consensus was that laser measurements couldn't be used on compounds with a molecular-weight limit of 1,000. But Koichi Tanaka didn't know that. He still chose to bombard the compounds with lasers, and then, due to an error, accidentally isolated a compound with a molecular weight exceeding 1,000, coincidentally solving a worldwide problem."
"I've heard of him." Xiang Xiaotong nodded. "After Koichi Tanaka solved the problem, he didn't think it was a big deal. He took the company bonus and moved on, continuing to work diligently as a junior employee. Later, a professor happened to hear about it and suggested that he write a paper. He did so, but still didn't take it seriously after finishing. Many years later, when he had almost forgotten about it, he suddenly won the Nobel Prize."
"That's right. After Koichi Tanaka won the Nobel Prize, a reporter called him to congratulate him on winning. Since he couldn't understand English, he hung up, thinking it was some kind of sales call," the reporter said with a laugh. "So the fact that the two of you won the Nobel Prize for work completed in a short time will also become a charming anecdote in Nobel Prize history!"
"What about Teacher Song's feelings upon winning?" the reporter asked.
"Personally, I was quite pleasantly surprised," Song He said. "I wasn't surprised that she and I could win the Nobel Prize. Without being modest, our abilities speak for themselves. What surprised me most was our age."
"The vast majority of Nobel Prizes are awarded for discoveries made three or four decades earlier, and the winners are all elderly men and women. There's always been a saying in academia that the first secret to winning a Nobel Prize is maintaining your health and living long enough. Many highly accomplished scholars missed out on the Nobel Prize simply because they died too young, before their turn in line came."
"So I always thought I'd have to wait in line for twenty or thirty years, or at least ten or eight, before suddenly receiving the award. I never expected to win it this year." Song He explained, "The Nobel Prize let me cut in line. I don't understand why, but of course I'm still very happy."
"He should be the youngest Nobel Prize winner in history." Xiang Xiaotong pointed at Song He.
"Really?" The reporter was surprised. "Teacher Song seems not to enjoy appearing in public, and the outside world knows very little about you. They don't even know your age. There wasn't even a photograph of you when the award was announced."
"I'm not that young. I'd only say I'm doing reasonably well," Song He said. "I really don't like appearing in public. After winning the Nobel Prize, I want to show my face even less. It would bring a lot of trouble to my life. I might even be recognized walking down the street."
"I see. Teacher Song prefers to keep a low profile," the reporter said.
"That's right. It's better to keep a low profile." Song He nodded.
"Teacher Xiang just mentioned that the work recognized by this award was a minor discovery made several years ago. Are either of you currently working on any major research projects?" the reporter asked.
"I don't have any projects in biology at the moment," Xiang Xiaotong said. "I'm mainly making up my mathematics. I've run into a bottleneck in mathematics, and I write books in my spare time."
"I'm mainly busy with matters at the Frontier Technology University School of Pharmacy. The school has just been established, so I have work from morning until night," Song He said. "In my spare time, I write books with her. She handles the main content, while I tag along and add a little."
"Oh? Are the two of you co-authoring the same book?" the reporter asked curiously. "Could you reveal a little about its general content in advance? Is it a textbook on biomedical research? Or are you both mathematicians writing a mathematics book?"
"It's a book about economics," Xiang Xiaotong said with a smile. "We're crossing into another field, and we don't even know whether we'll finish it. It's mainly about predicting the impact of technological explosions on the human economy."
"Right—Hibernation Technology, Longevity Drug technology, and Dream City technology," Song He said. "We believe these three technologies will cause tremendous changes in the human economy. Since we happen to be their developers, we understand the direction the technology is taking, so we're trying to make some predictions."
"Books by Nobel Prize winners have always sold extremely well, so the content sounds very promising! Dream City technology in particular seems to have attracted the attention of many economists, and several theories have already been proposed," the host said. "But so far, there has been no news about Dream City. Can you reveal anything about the development progress?"
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