Because Perelman only bought groceries for himself, the group of people didn’t stay for lunch.
Before leaving, Schultz mentioned that the ICM conference was happening in St. Petersburg, but Perelman didn’t respond.
Judging from Perelman’s face, he didn’t really care about the International Congress of Mathematicians at all.
However, before leaving, Perelman asked Lu Zhou what he planned on talking about for his conference report. When he heard that Lu Zhou was only going to talk about some of his previously published research, Perelman looked disappointed.
After leaving Perelman’s house, Schultz looked up at the bright sky and sighed.
“Looks like this trip was a waste.”
Lu Zhou curiously asked, “Why? Didn’t you just want to see your old friend? Why was it a waste?”
“Visiting my old friend was just one of my reasons,” Schultz said. “Actually, Professor Faltings asked me to come.”
Lu Zhou: “Faltings?”
Schultz nodded and said, “Yeah, he wants Perelman to go to the University of Bonn and participate in a big project.”
“… What kind of project?”
Schultz knew Lu Zhou would be interested. He smiled and spoke.
“If you are interested, you should pay attention to Faltings’ hour-long report at the conference. He will go into detail during the report. Basically, we need an expert in topology, differential topology, and differential geometry. Perelman, who proved the Poincaré conjecture, is undoubtedly the best candidate.”
Lu Zhou felt like Schultz was suggesting something.
However, he didn’t know anything about this plan, so he pretended to be oblivious.
“Do you think Perelman will think about it?”
Schultz shrugged and said, “… It is worth a try.”
…
Crazy ideas, big projects…
Lu Zhou felt like he heard a lot of interesting things today.
His intuition told him that this year’s International Congress of Mathematicians was going to be his most exciting one yet.
Of course, he had only attended one other ICM before…
Lu Zhou found a place to eat and went back to his hotel. He parted ways with Schultz, each of them going back to their respective hotel rooms.
Lu Zhou continued to research his proof of Riemann’s hypothesis until night time. He yawned and put down his pen.
“Is it ten o’clock already?”
Lu Zhou looked at his computer screen and was about to go to sleep when he suddenly remembered something important.
“Xiao Ai.”
Xiao Ai: [I’m here, Master!]
Lu Zhou contemplated for a second and said, “Search up someone for me, someone called Albert László Barabási, I think he’s a visiting professor at Harvard.”
Xiao Ai: [Ok! (๑•̀ᄇ•́)و✧]
Finding someone’s academic resume was easy.
Xiao Ai took less than three seconds to find Albert’s academic resume and Facebook. Xiao Ai presented the data in the style of a report.
Xiao Ai was probably the best secretary in the world in terms of efficiency.
Lu Zhou finished reading the report and saw that Albert was quite an interesting guy.
Even though he was a physicist, he became famous due to his research on network theory.
Interestingly, just like Professor Krugman had said, Albert had published many theses in Nature and Science. He even created the Barabási-Albert. However, what made him famous wasn’t his academic research, but rather his books…
His book “Linked: The New Science of Networks” was a cornerstone of complex network theory, and he was regarded by many as the originator of big data theory. His later book “Bursts: The Hidden Patterns Behind Everything We Do” further promoted big data theory.
If Nassim Nicholas Taleb believed that human behavior was random and unpredictable, then Albert’s theory predicted that human collective behavior was like a system composed of tiny particles. Although the behavior of any given particle was uncertain, their collective behavior could be predicted!
At least with 93% accuracy.
As for why he started to work with Professor Krugman…
This didn’t surprise Lu Zhou.
Krugman was interested in novel ideas. He loved to integrate mathematics and physics theories into economics.
Most people knew that he won the Nobel Prize for his international trade theory, but very few people knew that he had built models based on established physics theories. Such as “The Theory of Interstellar Trade”.
Therefore, it wasn’t surprising for him to work with Albert. He was exactly the type of person that would be fascinated by the proposition of “predicting the future”.
However, even though Lu Zhou was interested in this problem, he didn’t have any spare time to research this problem.
Regardless of what was going to happen in the future, there were two things that were going to happen with 100% certainty.
One was that the International Congress of Mathematicians was going to begin in two days, in which he had to conduct a 60-minute report.
The other was his visit to the nuclear fusion power station tomorrow morning.
This was East Asia Energy’s first project in Eastern Europe; it was also the first time a nuclear core was sent overseas.
Apparently this nuclear power plant had an interesting name, which was named by the president himself.
Its name was Helios.
This name came from Greek mythology, and it was an embodiment of the sun…
