Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
As a clear-minded atheist, Lu Zhou did not believe in ghosts.
Once his eyes adjusted to the dark corridor, he finally recognized the person.
“Molina?”
When the French lady heard Lu Zhou called out her na, she smiled and said, “I knew you would co here... Why didn’t you call ? I could’ve picked you up.”
This problem again...
Lu Zhou coughed and changed the subject, “I got my friend to do it... Where is Room 211?”
“Up the corridor, to the left,” said Molina as she pointed with her finger. She then said casually, “Oh yeah, have you chosen a supervisor yet?”
Lu Zhou, “What?”
“I’m saying that if you haven’t chosen one yet, I recomnd my supervisor Sophie Morel,” said Molina. She looked at Lu Zhou seriously as she continued, “My previous invitation is still valid, our project needs you.”
Sophie Morel?
Lu Zhou looked at her with surprise.
Molina raised her eyebrows and asked with a smile, “Are you surprised?”
“Yeah...” Lu Zhou nodded.
Sophie was one of the popular candidates for the Fields dal, a French mathematician.
However what surprised him was not the na Sophie, but it was Princeton’s ability to attract talent.
No wonder Princeton was nad the center of mathematics for Arica...
Lu Zhou suddenly understood why Princeton wanted to steal him from the University of Jin Ling.
It was all for Princeton to win the Fields dal...
With her arms crossed, Molina smirked and said: “...”
“Thanks for your invitation, but I refuse.”
Lu Zhou walked pass Molina and dragged his suitcase to the end of the corridor.
What a joke.
There’s a 99% chance I can win the dal, why would I choose a supervisor with an 80% chance of winning it? Is she crazy?
...
Lu Zhou originally planned on listening to a few lectures and find a suitable supervisor. It turned out that he underestimated his own value in regards to how “attractive” he was to the professors at Princeton.
He was invited to an academic exchange and coffee party. While he was eating at the exchange, a young female assistant started to talk to him. Soon, she was asking Lu Zhou about his supervisor.
Luo Wenxuan was even worse. He recomnded Lu Zhou nurous professors at the start. However, he would not stop bragging about Edward Witten. A xican dude nearby said sothing like, “That trash?”, which resulted in Luo Wenxuan nearly starting a fight.
Lu Zhou knew that he had to do.
To prevent more fighting, he had to make his own decision as soon as possible.
Lu Zhou went to Nassau Hall and got a list of supervisors. He studied the list for an hour before he finally chose Professor Deligne as his first candidate.
The reason was simple.
Algebraic geotry was an important tool for studying number theory and it was also one of Lu Zhou’s shortcomings. Lu Zhou wanted to study Grothendieck’s original manuscripts, but after he got the files from Academician Xiang Huanan, he found out that he could not understand French at all.
Professor Deligne was a stellar student of Grothendieck. There were only two people in history that had won the Fields Prize, Wolf Prize, and Crawford Award. One of them was Qiu Chengtong and the other was Deligne.
Lu Zhou could learn a lot from Professor Deligne.
After the interview, Lu Zhou thought that this serious professor would test him rigorously. He had not expected Professor Deligne to look at his research material and passed the interview on the spot.
Professor Deligne stood up from his desk and took a gray trench coat from the hanger.
“Welco to Princeton’s big family. I’ll help you sort out the relevant paperwork.”
“My research group mainly focuses on “standard conjectures”. Of course, I have no strict requirents for you. I won’t constrain your developnt. From my observation, you’re a scholar who is suited for independent research. If you want to join my research project, I’ll welco you with arms open. If you don’t want to, you can complete a task I give you and finish your own thesis at the sa ti. You can get your degree either way.”
Deligne paused. He looked at Lu Zhou and continued, “Of course, my expectations for you are higher than other people. Your graduation thesis must be Annual Mathematics level. If all goes well, you could get your PhD next year. If you’re too lax and waste your talent, you may never get your PhD.”
Lu Zhou, “I understand... I’ll think about your suggestions.”
Deligne nodded and said, “Okay... No worries, I understand. Try to get back to within three days.”
Lu Zhou: “...”
...
The Riemann’s conjecture was different from the twin pri conjecture or Polignac’s conjecture. The conjecture could be summarized in one line: “all non-trivial zeros of the Riemannζ function are located on the complex plane Re ( s) = 1/2”.
However, solving it was a massive project. It was like building a skyscraper.
Just like the Poincaré conjecture, Sr introduced the high-dinsional concept in the 1960s. Without Qiu Chengtong’s theory of “developing geotric structures with nonlinear differential equations”, in which he developed in the proof of the Karaby conjecture, there would be no Hamilton’s breakthrough in the “Ricci Stream”, and the 93-year paper on the singularity theory. There would be no final proof of Perelman.
This was the characteristics of Millennium Prize Problems. Even a genius, like Perelman, could not skip over previous work and directly established the proof of Poincaré conjecture.
Even if Gauss ca back alive and had an extra 80 years, he would not be able to solve it.
Riemann’s conjecture was the sa as it was even more difficult than Poincaré conjecture.
It was like a mountain, and all of the mathematicians were at the bottom of the mountain. They had no idea how tall the mountain was.
The only thing they knew was that this mountain was nearly impossible to solve. If soone could solve Riemann’s conjecture, even five Fields dals would not be enough...
If soone skipped all of the unsolved problems and used a new mathematical thod to solve Riemann’s conjecture, the situation would likely be the sa as the professor from Nigeria, who was not even a mathematician.
This was akin to people that wanted to use rocks and lightning to create a computer. It was completely out of reality. The Clay Institute would collect hundreds of theses a year and all of them were worthless.
Of course, the mathematicians were not completely at lost. Possible ideas were the “40% zero points” of Kangrui’s critical line theorem, or the three mathematicians who recently proposed to introduce the Riemann’s conjecture into a special case of quantum chanical systems.
There was also algebraic geotry thods.
For example, the Wei’s conjecture that was proved by Deligne (one of the most brilliant achievents in the pure number field in the 1970s), was often referred to as the “cottage version” Riemann’s conjecture.
As for the “standard conjecture” that Professor Deligne said to Lu Zhou, it was the general form of Wei’s conjecture. It was proposed by Grothendieck, the “Pope” of modern algebraic geotry.
If Professor Deligne wanted to fulfill his teacher’s long-cherished wish of proving Riemann’s conjecture, he would have to face the standard conjecture.
When Lu Zhou returned to his dorm and laid in his bed, he started to seriously think about Professor Deligne’s offer.
Right now, he had two choices.
One was to join Professor Deligne’s research project. Although the standard conjecture could increase his mathematics experience, it would delay the progress of his system mission. Especially since he did not know how much work Professor Deligne had done, or had yet to be done.
The other option was to go solo. He could concentrate all of his energy on Goldbach’s conjecture, and use it as his PhD graduation thesis.
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