Luo Wenxuan and the students weren’t the only ones who were surprised, even Lu Zhou himself couldn’t believe what was in the email.
After Lu Zhou carefully read Professor Faltings’ review, he had a rough understanding of what Faltings meant.
Professor Faltings believed that there were major problems in some parts of the thesis, which led to serious proof fallacies in the core part of the thesis. Faltings believed that Lu Zhou’s thesis did not prove that when ε approached infinitely small, there were no non-zero trivial points in the region of Re (s) ≥1-ε.
Honestly, this was Lu Zhou’s first thesis rejection.
Luo Wenxuan stood behind Lu Zhou and also read the review comments. He gulped and said, “There’s a problem with the proof?”
Lu Zhou shook his head and said, “It’s too early to judge. Let me look over it again.”
He Changwen, who was secretly listening to the conversation, almost dropped his pen.
Wow…
When most people’s theses get rejected by peer review, they just quietly make the necessary changes. But Lu Zhou seems to disagree with the review result…
He Changwen couldn’t help but think.
Lu Zhou really is a god…
If only I become as nutty as him one day…
Lu Zhou didn’t care what his students were thinking.
Lu Zhou bent down and pulled out his manuscript, the one that proved the Quasi Riemann hypothesis. He began checking Faltings’ comments line by line.
Luo Wenxuan had no idea what was going on as he wasn’t an expert in analytic number theory. He stood behind Lu Zhou, muddled, pretending like he understood Lu Zhou’s thesis.
Ten minutes passed by.
Just as Luo Wenxuan was yawning, Lu Zhou suddenly closed his manuscript and threw the stack of thesis on the table.
Luo Wenxuan asked curiously, “So?”
Lu Zhou shook his head.
“I don’t think there is a problem.”
Luo Wenxuan paused for a second and said, “Then… was Professor Faltings wrong?”
Luo Wenxuan wasn’t confident that Lu Zhou was right.
After all, that was Professor Faltings, the godfather of mathematics.
His influence in mathematics was greater than Luo Wenxuan’s mentor, Edward Witten.
However, Faltings had a bad temper, he wasn’t as well-liked in the academic community as Witten.
“It’s too early to debate who is right and who is wrong.” Lu Zhou stood up from his chair and paused for a second, and he said, “I will talk to Professor Faltings about this.”
“It might be difficult to communicate with him… He usually doesn’t change his opinions, also…” Luo Wenxuan hesitated for a second and said, “You might be ridiculed by him.”
“I don’t care about that,” Lu Zhou said. “If he is right, I’ll make the necessary corrections. If I am right, I won’t change my thesis at all.”
Luo Wenxuan said, “What if you can’t convince one another?”
This type of situation was actually quite common. When two people in the academic community had similar rankings, it was very difficult for one to convince the other.
After all, the deeper the research was, the more nuanced things would become. Sometimes, two different scholars would argue for a long time about who was correct.
Of course, this was the beauty of mathematics.
An argument couldn’t last forever. There would always be one side that was correct. Even when a new proposed theorem could destroy the entire foundation of mathematics, there was always a way to resolve the situation.
“If neither of us can convince the other…”
Lu Zhou paused for a second and spoke nonchalantly.
“Then it’ll depend on who can convince the public.”
…
All secrets would eventually become known, one way or the other.
On the night Lu Zhou received his thesis review from Annual Mathematics, something major happened on Mathoverflow.
Someone posted that Lu Zhou’s Quasi Riemann hypothesis, which was submitted to Annual Mathematics, was rejected by reviewer Faltings.
Once the news broke out, the entire forum was discussing this matter.
[Professor Lu was rejected? This is impossible!]
[I told you, there are mistakes in his proof. You guys didn’t believe me. I’m not the only one who thinks so, even Professor Faltings agreed with me, dumba*ses!]
[Rejection is pretty common, right? Even top scholars make small mistakes.]
[This is not a simple rejection. Didn’t you see the screenshot? The wording of the rejection implies there are major defects in the thesis. See how it said, “there are major flaws in the core argument”? Generally speaking, this means that, if Lu Zhou can’t make the necessary changes, the thesis would be thrown into the trash bin!]
[This is so unusual…]
[It’s not unusual. After all, the reviewer is Faltings.]
[…]
Strictly speaking, the review process should be confidential. However, somehow, the screenshots of the reply were leaked out.
After the Annual Mathematics editorial department found out about the screenshots, they immediately contacted the administrators of the Mathoverflow forum. The Mathoverflow admins agreed to delete the posts, but nothing on the Internet was ever truly deleted.
Not to mention that the mathematics academic community loved to gossip. Besides, this kind of news would cause intense discussion in the entire community.
After all, Faltings and Lu Zhou were two big names in the mathematics world, and they were debating about the most important problem in mathematics…
The controversy lasted for three full days, and neither party made a response.
Faltings didn’t have a Mathoverflow account, while Lu Zhou, who had an account, didn’t like posting on forums.
While the people were discussing what Lu Zhou and Faltings would do, Jin Ling University suddenly made a post on the school website.
The post was very short, it was only a couple of paragraphs.
However, the information contained was huge.
[On December 18th, our school will conduct an academic report on the “Quasi Riemann hypothesis” in the old campus auditorium. Questions regarding the proof will be answered. Registrations are currently open. Those who are interested in participating, please register before December 7th.
[Presenter: Lu Zhou (Academician)]
On the day this news was released…
The mathematics world exploded!
