Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
A quiet home in Princeton, New Jersey.
A bald Caucasian man stuffed his clothes into a suitcase and yelled, “I don’t have time, go and find someone else! Right now, my teacher is in a hospital bed. This may the last time I’ll see him! For this month, I don’t want to see anything related to mathematics.”
The middle-aged man in a suit had an awkward smile. He was not angry at all.
After all, the man that stood in front of him was the famous Viscount Pierre Deligne, the guy that proved Weil’s conjecture. He had won the Fields Medal, Crafoord Prize, Wolf Prize, and the Abel Prize. If there was a mathematics prize, he had won it.
Even in an advanced institution like Princeton, an institution that acmodated mathematics geniuses around the world, Deligne still stood out.
Davis was just an ordinary editor for the Mathematics Chronicle. Although he graduated from the journalism department of Johns Hopkins University, he knew a little about mathematics.
Mathematics Chronicle was like the son of Princeton University and the stepson of Johns Hopkins University. However, Princeton was also responsible for the journal [Year of Mathematics], which was well respected in the mathematics munity. Therefore, Princeton began to spend fewer resources on Mathematics Chronicle.
You’re reading on . Thanks!
The editors at Johns Hopkins University were trying their best to maintain the academic influence of Mathematics Chronicle.
Normally, an ordinary number theory thesis would not be worthy of Davis’ attention. It was a mere coincidence that he had a certain amount of knowledge on number theory that when he first read the thesis, he immediately discovered the extraordinary value of it.
There were countless conjectures about the distribution law of the Mersenne prime numbers, but none of the conjectures had been proved. Among them, the most mathematically beautiful and precise conjecture was undoubtedly the famous Zhou’s conjecture.
When 2^(2^n) < P < 2^(2^n 1), then the amount of Mersenne primes is 2^(n 1)-1.
However, this was just a guess.
Zhou’s conjecture had not been proved or disproved.
When it was proved, it would be upgraded to a theorem!
Even though Davis saw that Professor Delini did not care, Davis refused to give up. Instead, he said, “e on, Viscount Deligne! Your research is the most outstanding from any professor I’ve ever seen! I read this thesis and instantly thought of you. We’ve been working together for many years now. Can you just please take a look?”
“Stop kissing my ass,” said Deligne as he slammed the suitcase down and laughed coldly. He said, “I know I’m good.”
He usually was not this irritable. Like all the other geniuses at Princeton, he was only a little arrogant. Normally, if Davis brought an interesting thesis to him, he would take the time and read it.
However, no matter how interesting the thesis may be, he had more important matters to attend to.
His teacher, Mr. Grottendick, was lying in a hospital bed and could pass away at any time.
He did not have the appetite to study some math problem. He had to fly to France and see his teacher.
Not only did he paused his academic editor work, but he also stopped his own research projects temporarily.
Davis tried to convince him, “Don’t you want to bring a gift to Mr. Grottendick?”
Deligne said angrily, “Gift? A piece of trash paper? I’d rather buy a flower in France!”
“I promise you, this paper is not as bad as you think,” said Davis sincerely. He then added, “Isn’t proving Riemann’s conjecture your teacher’s life goal? The distribution law of Mersenne prime numbers has been solved, and we have taken another step forward towards the crown of this mathematical world… Even if it’s just a small step! I remember the remark you said in last year’s academic report – that the road to the end of the Riemann zeta function was dark and required countless candles to illuminate… Now, the match is in your hand.”
Deligne stared at Davis and was silent for a while before he finally snatched the thesis from David’s hand.
“F*ck!”
Finally, the academician could no longer contain his curiosity.
“A proof of Zhou’s theorem?” Deligne’s frowned.
He had read countless theses like this in the past and it only recently stopped being so mon. People who thought that they were smart always liked to pick seemingly simple questions, but they had never even started to solve them.
If Zhou’s conjecture was proven, it could really help the research for Riemann’s conjecture. After all, the behavior of the Riemann zeta function was closely related to the frequency of prime numbers. The Riemann hypothesis was about when the zeta function was zero.
When Deligne read the author’s name, he was shocked.
Lu Zhou?
Chinese guy? Or ABC?
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