Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
The venue exploded the moment the winner was announced.
A 24-year-old Fields Medal winner!
The thunderous applause was like nothing else.
The conference venue wasn’t the only place that exploded.
The second Director Mori read the name “Lu Zhou”, the comments section of the CCTV broadcast exploded.
[Amazing!]
[God Lu is nutty!]
[Congratulations!]
[The third Chinese Fields Medal winner! The first Chinese citizen to win the Fields Medal!]
[Powerful youth, powerful country! Thank you, Professor Lu! (flag) (flag) (flag)]
[I’m from Jin Ling University as well, I guess I went to a fake university, haha.]
[The difference between some people is bigger than the difference between people and pigs.]
[Genius student, please give me some luck, don’t let me fail any subjects this semester…]
Although the total amount of theses output in China had continued to grow, the Chinese mathematics community was never at the cutting-edge.
Maybe a Fields Medal didn’t represent anything or mean anything.
But this medal gave countless people hope and confidence in the new generation of Chinese scholars…
CCTV’s live broadcast wasn’t the only place that exploded…
Yesterday, the Shuimu University forums were filled with posts on the Navier–Stokes equation, and today, it was conquered by the Fields Medal.
At least half of the new posts on the forum were about the Fields Medal. Most of the posts weren’t talking about the Fields Medal itself, but rather, the Fields Medal winner…
[Amazing, a 24-year-old Fields Medal winner! I remember the 230IQ Tao Zhexuan won it when he was 31, right?]
[The youngest Fields Medal winner was Jean-Pierre Serre, and he was 27 years old when he won it. Lu Zhou bet the record by three years…]
[This is scary… When did Jin Ling University’s mathematics department become this strong?]
[God knows, I only know they’re strong at physics. They don’t even have a mathematics academician!]
[The International Mathematical Union is taking a big risk here! Many 39-year-olds are waiting for the prize. Giving the Fields Medal to a 24-year-old, isn’t that a bit impulsive?]
[Why not? He’s solved both the Goldbach’s conjecture and the Millennium Prize Problem, Navier–Stokes equation. You really think he’s honored to have the Fields Medal? And not the other way around?]
…
The applause inside the venue gradually subsided.
Lu Zhou didn’t know what was happening online when the International Mathematical Union announced his name.
He wasn’t sure how excited the people were.
He walked on stage while being watched by the crowd and cameras. He then received the Fields Medal medal from Director Mori.
This old professor shook hands with Lu Zhou and congratulated him on behalf of the International Mathematical Union.
“Congratulations, scholar from China.”
Lu Zhou smiled and nodded. “Thank you.”
The awards ceremony continued.
To no one’s surprise, the second winner was Peter Schultz from Germany.
Schultz’s PhD thesis created a new field of “complete geometry”. He had, on average, received one award for every two theses he had ever written. His outstanding contributions to the arithmetic geometry field was recognized by the entire mathematics community.
He didn’t win the Fields Medal last time because everyone didn’t understand his “p-class perfect space theory (PS theory)”. However, after he made a series of breakthroughs in the Langlands program using his PS theory, no one had any more doubts about his theoretical tool.
The third and fourth winners were a bit inferior to the first two winners, but they were undoubtedly still top scholars of mathematics.
One of them was Caucher Birkar, an Iranian scholar from the University of Cambridge, and the other was Akshay Venkatesh, an Australian scholar from Stanford.
The former was a legendary Kurdish refugee while the latter was an Australian who had won both the International Physics Olympiad and the International Mathematical Olympiad… when he was only 12 years old.
After these four scholars’ names were announced, a round of thunderous applause was heard again in the venue.
Sophie Morel looked at the four people on stage, and she looked a little depressed. She bit her lip and didn’t say anything.
Molina, who was sitting next to her, sighed and tried to comfort her supervisor. “… You still have a chance.”
Zhang Wei was on the other side of the hall. He stared at the stage, and after a while, he suddenly sighed.
Xu Chenyang tried to comfort his old friend. “This is unfortunate…”
Zhang Wei shook his head and said, “It’s not that bad.”
This was his last chance. By the time the next mathematics conference came around, he would have passed the age limit of forty.
Although it was a pity that he could never win the Fields Medal, he couldn’t help but feel a little comfort in his heart.
Because a Chinese scholar finally won the Fields Medal.
However, it was unfortunate that he wasn’t the one to bring this honor to his country…
Zhang Wei looked at the four Fields Medal winners on stage and suddenly said, “What were you doing when you were 24 years old?”
Xu Chenyang replied, “I was studying my PhD at Princeton, what else?”
“I was at Columbia University that year…” Zhang Wei suddenly shook his head and said, “We lose fair and square.”
…
After the award ceremony, the four winners sat together.
Peter Schultz was sitting next to Lu Zhou. As he stared into the camera, he poked Lu Zhou’s arm.
“Ah, we meet again.”
Lu Zhou smiled and said, “Yeah, long time no see.”
These two first met at the 2015 American Mathematics Conference. Coincidentally, they both won an award at that conference as well.
However, one won the Cole Number Theory Prize while the other won the Cole Algebra Prize.
Ever since then, the two had been communicating through email.
The last time Lu Zhou went to Germany, he originally planned to visit Schultz at the University of Bonn. Unfortunately, he was caught up with work and didn’t get to go.
Schultz smiled and said, “Congratulations, youngest Fields Medal winner. You beat Jean-Pierre’s record by three years.”
Lu Zhou smiled and said, “Thank you, congratulations to you as well!”
When he was 22 years old, Schultz had the chance to break this record when he created his “perfect space” theory as the following year happened to be the International Congress of Mathematicians.
However, his “perfect space” theory didn’t receive recognition from the algebraic geometry community. It only helped him get his PhD.
Schultz said, “You’ve already defeated the Navier–Stokes equation, so what’s next? What do you plan on researching?”
Lu Zhou gave a simple answer. “The application of the L Manifold on plasma physics.”
“Still partial differential equations?” Schultz sighed and said, “Do you really not want to dabble in algebraic geometry?”
Algebraic geometry was one of the main fields of pure mathematics; some would say it is the most mainstream mathematics branch. However, many people were disappointed that Professor Lu wasn’t interested in algebraic geometry.
Lu Zhou smiled and said, “There are already so many geniuses in that field, there’s no need for me to join in.”
Schultz smiled and said, “Have you heard this joke about you before?”
Lu Zhou said, “What joke?”
Schultz said jokingly, “If you encounter a research problem you cannot solve, one of the methods to solve it is to make Professor Lu be interested in it.”
