What has to come will come.
The last day of July.
Even though every pore in Lu Zhou’s body was yelling no, he still stopped his research and began packing as he prepared for the International Congress of Mathematicians at St. Petersburg.
As for the 60-minute report, after some thinking, he finally decided on making a brief summary regarding his work on the Riemann zeta function over the past few years and uploaded the thesis to the International Congress of Mathematicians website.
In fact, this was nothing out of the ordinary.
Whether it was a 45-minute report or a 60-minute report, these conference reports weren’t held specifically for ground-breaking results. It was more to give scholars a platform to present the progress they had made over the past couple of years.
After all, for most areas of mathematics, especially number theory, it was nearly impossible to consistently produce ground-breaking research.
It was naive to think that hard work and discipline guaranteed good research.
“Xiao Ai, should I bring a jacket?”
It was still summer in Jinling. Lu Zhou even felt hot wearing a t-shirt, but he heard St. Petersburg was starting to get cold.
The drone dangling next to Lu Zhou began to display a string of text on its screen.
Xiao Ai: [St. Petersburg is located at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, situated at 59° N. The temperature during August is between 13 and 20 Celsius. Even though it is not too cold, I recommend Master bringing a windbreaker of a leather jacket. (๑•̀ᄇ•́)و✧]
“Oh, I see… I’ll bring this trench coat then.”
Lu Zhou looked at his fully packed suitcase and contemplated for a second. He then pulled out a couple of t-shirts from his suitcase and stuffed in a black trench coat.
He still remembered wearing this coat when he received an award in Berlin.
That was a long time ago; he didn’t expect this coat to still fit him so well.
Lu Zhou sighed and felt a little emotional.
I guess the saying that “whoever proves the Riemann hypothesis will be immortal” is true.
He had already proven a weaker form of Riemann’s hypothesis, the Quasi Riemann hypothesis. Logically speaking, that should make him at least a half-immortal.
While Lu Zhou was day-dreaming, the small display floating next to him began to flash.
Xiao Ai: [Master, video call request, the IP address is from North America. ~(•̀∀•́)]
Is it Xiao Tong?
Or Vera?
Without asking who the video call was from, Lu Zhou said, “Pick up the call.”
Xiao Ai: [Ok! (๑•̀ᄇ•́)و✧]
The drone screen began to display a video call interface.
Lu Zhou instantly recognized the person on the screen. He was slightly surprised.
“Wei Wen?”
“Professor…”
Lu Zhou smiled and said, “Why did you suddenly decide to call me?”
“I have some things I want to ask about…” Wei Wen awkwardly said. He noticed Lu Zhou’s half-packed suitcase, so he curiously asked, “Are you going to the ICM in St. Petersburg?”
“Yeah, I have to do an hour report there… Speaking of which, how have you been? Qin Yue said you’re a lecturer at the MIT materials science department, do you like it there?”
For some reason, Wei Wen suddenly looked a little distraught.
He sighed and shook his head.
“It’s not going well, can we not talk about it… I’m about to be unemployed.”
Unemployed?
Lu Zhou stood up and looked at Wei Wen through the small display. He frowned and asked, “What’s going on? Are you… in trouble?”
Lu Zhou had the impression that Wei Wen was quite a talented guy, with outstanding mathematical modeling abilities. Ever since Wei Wen transferred to the computational materials science field, he had been totally killing it. Apparently, he had already published three papers in major journals.
Lu Zhou had no idea why MIT would want to get rid of such an excellent scholar.
Not to mention, he was Lu Zhou’s ex-student…
There’s no way he’s on the verge of unemployment, right?
Wei Wen knew that Lu Zhou was confused, so he asked, “Are you on a retreat again?”
Lu Zhou said, “Sort of… Why?”
“Nothing, there’s something going on right now…” Wei Wen sighed and said, “I’m not the only one in trouble, all of the Chinese scholars at MIT are not having a good time…”
Wei Wen spent five minutes giving Lu Zhou a brief explanation.
Apparently, at the beginning of July, the White House suddenly issued a special bill signed by the president, which requested the embassy to tighten the visa restrictions.
On the surface, it would seem like an MIT mathematics professor would be unaffected.
However, after the bill was signed, MIT, Stanford, and other major universities suddenly changed their attitude toward Chinese lecturers and professors. Not only did they reduce their scientific funding, but they also reduced their lecture hours.
Even scholars that had worked in the United States for decades but hadn’t gotten citizenship were severely affected.
Apparently, the reason this happened was that someone from the FBI interviewed the board of directors of major universities. Even though they hadn’t been fired yet, these rumors made the professors and lecturers feel uneasy.
“Actually, I saw some signs two years ago, but I didn’t expect it to come to this.”
Lu Zhou said, “What do you mean?”
Wei Wen sighed and said, “The MIT global admission standards are based on academic ability, personality traits, and diversity. But there haven’t been any Chinese students admitted in the past two years. In fact, the universities have been mistreating us since a long time ago.”
Lu Zhou nodded and said, “That seems unusual.”
Even though there was no explicit rule prohibiting Chinese students, over the past two years, there hadn’t been a single Chinese student that was admitted to Stanford or MIT. The few Chinese students that were admitted, were born in America.
And it seemed like MIT had exacerbated this problem.
“The academic environment is becoming more and more unfriendly. It wasn’t like this a decade ago. A while ago, I was talking with a Chinese materials science professor about this. China’s achievements in nuclear fusion and aerospace have triggered the Americans.
“Especially after the Ares program disaster last year, the Americans were in shambles. I can even feel the students being discriminatory toward me when I give lectures.”
Wei Wen sounded hurt.
“Now, there are rumors in the academic community that Congress is going to issue a stricter bill, so everyone’s feeling anxious. I don’t know how long I can stay here, I might even get fired tomorrow.”
Lu Zhou: “You’re a mathematics researcher, are you also affected by this?”
“I mean, my research isn’t pure mathematics. I work with the materials science laboratory. Someone even suspected I was a Chinese spy.” Wei Wen shook his head and said, “What kind of spy helps them clean experimental data and do research… Sigh, if it weren’t for my in-progress research, I would want to quit myself.”
Lu Zhou went silent for a while. He then said, “You can always come back to Jinling. The academic environment is pretty good. What’s your salary like? I promise to match it.”
Before video calling Lu Zhou, Wei Wen had seriously considered going back to China.
However, for some reason, after he heard Lu Zhou’s offer, he began to hesitate.
After a couple of seconds, he clenched his jaw and spoke.
“Thanks…
“But I want to produce some good research first, at least get into the Thousand Talents Plan.”
Even though he was being closely monitored in America, which would make it difficult for him to produce any research results, he still didn’t want to give up this easily.
After all, if he came back to China having achieved nothing at all…
He would feel a little regretful.
Lu Zhou was worried about his student, but he knew why Wei Wen was doing this. He nodded and spoke.
“Then you have to be careful, you’re all the way across the Pacific Ocean. If you get into trouble, it’s hard for me to help you.”
Wei Wen nodded and said, “Thank you!”
