Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Higher mathematics institute, 11:30 am.
At the moment, Deligne was checking his email. He was about to choose interesting papers from the Annual Mathematics and Mathematics Chronicle to review during his lunch break.
He briefly scanned through the thesis titles when suddenly, he froze.
[Any even number greater than 2 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers.]
Goldbach’s conjecture?
Deligne squinted his eyes as he opened the email and looked at the abstract.
Although Annual Mathematics had a double-blind review rule, it was well known that this rule was not strictly enforced.
For example, some people liked to submit to arXiv before the peer review. One could guess the identity of the author from the abstract grammar style and wording.
Without a question, this thesis was Lu Zhou’s. After all, it was not Deligne’s first time reviewing Lu Zhou’s thesis.
As Deligne continued to read the thesis, he started to frown.
Suddenly, he looked up at his PhD student and said, “Smith, go to the restaurant later and bring me a bacon sandwich and a coffee.”
Smith stretched and stood up before he said, “Okay, professor… Eating in the office today?”
“Yes,” said Deligne. He turned on the printer and took out his glasses from his pocket before he said, “There’s an interesting thesis waiting for me.”
…
It had been five days but Lu Zhou did not hear any news. It was almost as if his thesis was tossed into the water.
However, on the sixth day, he received an unexpected call.
It was from Qiu Chengtong.
Professor Qiu only said one thing, “You proved it?!”
When Lu Zhou heard his question, he nodded and answered, “If you’re talking about Goldbach’s conjecture… Then yeah, I proved it.”
The other end of the telephone went silent.
Qiu Chengtong was shocked. He did not know what to say.
He had seen many talented young mathematicians like Tao Zhexuan, who taught in California, or Yunzhi, who taught at Yale… They had all made outstanding research results in their respective fields.
However, Lu Zhou was undoubtedly the most eye-catching one and the one that surprised him the most.
Back then, he only wanted to nudge Lu Zhou in the direction of Goldbach’s conjecture. He had not expected Lu Zhou to solve it.
After all, both the circle method and sieve method were exhausted. Even though Lu Zhou had experience researching prime numbers, it was almost impossible to solve this conjecture in such a short amount of time.
Lu Zhou’s performance completely went beyond his expectations.
Qiu Chengtong took a deep breath and asked with a serious tone, “How confident are you?”
Lu Zhou thought for a moment before he answered, “Above 90%.”
He actually wanted to say 100% since the system approved his thesis. However, he wanted to be more modest as the review could give him a hard time. He was 100% confident that it was correct, but he was not 100% confident that it would be accepted and approved by the community.
When Professor Qiu heard Lu Zhou’s reply, he nodded.
His research focus on partial differential equations and differential geometry, and even a little mathematical physics. However, he was not in the field of number theory, so he could not objectively evaluate Lu Zhou’s thesis.
However if Lu Zhou said he was 90% confident, that meant that the thesis had no problems.
Professor Qiu paused for a moment before he said with emotion, “The death of Hua Luogeng devastated the entire Hua Luogeng School. The two mountains also suppressed the community. Honestly, I didn’t expect you to solve Goldbach’s conjecture. I wanted you to just challenge it as studying Goldbach’s conjecture would definitely help your understanding of prime numbers. Even if you couldn’t solve the problem, it could give you useful knowledge and experience… But now it seems that I underestimated you.”
The Hua Luogeng School was an internationally renowned “Analytic Number Theory School”, also known as Shuimu School.
Lu Zhou knew of Professor Qiu’s trouble with Yan University, so he could probably guess what he meant by the two mountains.
However, he did not want to participate in this conversation, so he only smiled and did not respond.
Professor Qiu smiled and said, “Once you graduated, would you be interested in becoming a professor at Shuimu?”
Lu Zhou thought for a moment. He then smiled and said, “I’ll probably become a professor at Princeton for two years. As for after returning to China, I already promised that I’ll return to my school.”
Qiu Chengtong did not say much. Instead, he nodded and said, “Okay then, the University of Jin Ling is good. Academic needs collision and sublimation of thinking as it is a blooming process. The University of Jin Ling is a good place and it’s within the academic circle. It’s good that you want to pursue academia there.”
Going to Shuimu was equivalent to going against Yan University, and Professor Qiu was aware of this.
If Lu Zhou was only an average scholar, he would definitely try his best to convince Lu Zhou to come to Shuimu, to fight the mountains.
However, Professor Qiu could not bear to watch Lu Zhou’s talents wasted on things outside of academia.
At least between 20 and 40 years old, Lu Zhou’s talents should be on academia, and not the academic circle.
The two chatted for a bit before they ended the call.
However, just as Lu Zhou was about to eat dinner, he received another phone call.
This time it was his supervisor, Professor Deligne.
…
Lu Zhou came to the Institute for Advanced Study because of Deligne’s phone call.
Since taking a vacation, he had not been here in two months. He nearly got lost when he entered through the side door.
Lu Zhou finally found Deligne’s office and knocked.
When Deligne saw Lu Zhou, he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyebrows.
“I’ve already read your thesis… Honestly, Goldbach’s conjecture is beyond my field of study. My own opinions can’t decide anything on a major conjecture like this. Furthermore, I’m your supervisor.”
Lu Zhou understood what Professor Deligne meant.
After all, Goldbach’s conjecture was not like Polignac’s conjecture or the twin prime conjecture. Even though it was less significant than Fermat’s last theorem, it still deserved to be taken seriously by the entire number theory community.
When he submitted it to Annual Mathematics, he did not specify an academic editor. Annual Mathematics must have given the thesis to Deligne.
Lu Zhou asked, “What do you want me to do?”
Deligne said, “I’ll arrange a one hour report with the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study. You’ll have to prepare a PowerPoint and speech. I can arrange for someone to help you with the presentation. Also, you have to tell me when you’re free.”
Lu Zhou asked, “I’m always free. The thing is… Is there an academic conference in the near future?”
He had been paying attention to academic conferences. If he recalled correctly, there were no major conferences planned in May.
“Nope, but that doesn’t matter,” said Professor Deligne. He paused for a second before he said, “Your research result is good enough for other scholars to make a special trip to Princeton.”
Professor Deligne spoke concisely.
If there were no academic conferences, he could just schedule one.
