Why Do Nuclei Come Together?

The class seemed to have started only a short while ago.

Lu Zhou gently pushed open the back door. He glanced at the middle-aged professor writing on the board with his back to the room, then slipped in without disturbing him or the other students—not even the guy asleep beside the door. He found an inconspicuous seat at the back of the lecture hall and sat down quietly.

Inspiration did not come knocking. You had to go looking for it.

Lu Zhou agreed with something Fermi had once said: thinking about why seemingly obvious questions were obvious could deepen one's understanding of more difficult ones.

There was precedent for that in both Physics and Mathematics.

Back at Princeton, whenever Lu Zhou ran into a problem he could not solve, he would make time to teach a few undergraduate classes. Sometimes he would sit in on another professor's lecture to look for inspiration.

While he was working on the Goldbach Conjecture, for example, one of Professor Fefferman's Number Theory lectures had given him a great deal of insight. Not because Fefferman had taught anything particularly profound. Quite the opposite: everything he had covered was straightforward and easy to understand...

Having finished writing on the board, the middle-aged professor at the lectern cleared his throat and began to speak.

"Quantum Mechanics is a profound subject. If you truly delve into it, it may overturn your understanding of the microscopic world, of Physics, and even of classical philosophy. Now, I know my voice may put you to sleep, but I wouldn't recommend starting in the very first class..."

Good-natured laughter rippled through the room. Lu Zhou, sitting at the back, could not help smiling too.

The professor seemed to be a young scholar who knew how to teach, at least. He had not