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20th Jan 2018

Man hides marriage proposal to girlfriend in scientific paper

Good thing she read it.

Anna O'Rourke

Researcher hides marriage proposal to girlfriend in scientific paper

We love a creative marriage proposal but they can be hard to get right.

I think we’re all in agreement that a super-public proposal like at a concert or via flashmob is a little much, so what’s a guy to do to pull off a grand romantic gesture?

Well, lets put it like this – if your other half wrote a scientific paper on the subject of refrigeration, how long would it take you to get around to reading it?

Researcher hides marriage proposal to girlfriend in scientific paper

That’s pretty much exactly how a proposal went down last year.

In an academic paper titled ‘Performance analysis for minimally nonlinear irreversible refrigerators at finite cooling power’, Chinese researcher Rui Long left a rather sweet hidden request.

A line from the acknowledgements reads;

“Rui Long wants to thank, in particular, the patience, care and support from Panpan Mao over the passed years. Will you marry me?”

The proposal was spotted and tweeted last week by Jess Wade, a physics researcher at Imperial College London.

 

“Romance is not dead, it’s just behind a paywall,” she wrote.

Thankfully, it sounds like Panpan is a solid girlfriend and actually read the paper.

“Panpan said yes!” Rui told the Times Higher Education this week.

Fair play to Rui for such a lovely gesture –  thank God it worked out.