It was getting closer and closer to the end of the month. Recently, another sensational event happened in the mathematics community. The impact of this event was not only in the academic community, but it even spread beyond the academic community.
In his office at the Institute for Advanced Study, Hadi was sitting in front of his computer, browsing through conference information. When he saw the news, he was stunned.
He was so surprised that he almost screamed out loud.
"Professor, I heard that the Riemann conjecture was proven?!"
Lu Zhou: "Oh yeah?"
Hadi said excitedly, "I saw it on Mathoverflow. Apparently, Sir Michael Atiyah from the University of Cambridge claimed that he proved the Riemann conjecture using a very simple method. He will be giving a speech at the Heidelberg Prize Winners Forum."
Mathoverflow was a famous online mathematics community. Many big names in the mathematics community had their own accounts there. For example, TAO God was particularly active there. Not only did he update his blog regularly, but he also often interacted with visitors.
After hearing Hadi's words, Lu Zhou smiled and spoke in a joking tone.
"If he really completes the proof, there is no doubt that he will become the greatest mathematician of the century."
Hadi: "Are you optimistic about his proof?"
Lu Zhou didn't directly answer this question. Instead, he simply expressed his opinion.
"Sir Atiyah is a very outstanding scholar. He is also the winner of the Abel and Fields Prizes. However, he is already 89 years old … To be honest, it is difficult to give an objective evaluation."
In fact, Atiyah was definitely not the first scholar to claim to have proved the Riemann conjecture.
In the academic community, around 2004, Professor de Branges, a well-known scholar in the field of number theory, also claimed to have solved the Riemann conjecture. This caused quite a stir at the time, but unfortunately, it was not recognized by the mathematics community.
If it was a little earlier, even Hardy had claimed that he had solved this conundrum.
Hadi hesitated for a second and said, "But … He is Sir Atiyah, the winner of the Abel and Fields Prizes. If he didn't have full confidence, would he make such a claim?"
Lu Zhou smiled and said, "My dear student Hadi, if you plan on becoming a scholar, then you must remember that medals are glory, but only glory. In other words, because the mathematics community awarded him these two honors, he should respond to people's well-founded doubts. He shouldn't ignore people who doubt him like fools. "
Faced with Hadi's questioning gaze, Lu Zhou paused for a second and spoke.
"Compared to Riemann's conjecture, I want to know what of of Sir Atiyah's proof of the complex structure of the six-dimensional sphere S ^ 6."
Hadi: "… The complex structure of the six-dimensional sphere S ^ 6?"
Lu Zhou nodded and said, "This is a famous unsolved problem in the K-theory of algebraic topology. Although it's not a Millennium Prize Problem, it's as important as the Millennium Prize Problems in the field of algebraic topology. Around 16 years ago, Sir Atiyah gave a negative answer to this proposition, but his thesis wasn't satisfactory. Not only was the proof only half a page long, but he even talked about the history of mathematics in the fourth part of the thesis … "
Lu Zhou paused for a second and shrugged. He then said, "According to the news on Mathoverflow, he hasn't responded to people's doubts, and the academic community is also skeptical of his thesis."
The thesis on the complex structure of the six-dimensional sphere S ^ 6 could be found on arXiv, so he wasn't making this up.
Not only did he "solve" a famous problem in K-theory, but he also solved one of the most important problems in the mathematics community in less than two years …
Lu Zhou obviously hoped that this was true. After all, most mathematicians had a hero complex.
But for this ninety-year-old old man …
Honestly, Lu Zhou didn't have high hopes.
Mathematics was a young field, and there was no such thing as being old and vigorous. Once a person aged, their memory and thinking abilities would decline.
Therefore, there were very few mathematicians who could produce outstanding results in their later years.
In short, no matter what the final result was, as long as the old man was happy …
…
The Riemann's conjecture was a very interesting research topic, but it wasn't what Lu Zhou was most concerned about.
After he set a "follow" on the report, he placed the focus of his work back on the fusion light mission chain.
Designing a stellarator was too much work, and quantum computers were still a long way off. After considering various factors, he finally chose superconducting materials as his next research topic.
Honestly, superconducting materials weren't easy either. However, it seemed like this was the closest research topic to his field.
Lu Zhou met Connie at the Frick Chemistry Laboratory.
Because of his collaboration with Professor Pablo Herrero, Lu Zhou had been at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the past six months. He only came back last week.
When Lu Zhou saw Connie, he went straight to the point and asked, "How's the superconducting materials project going?"
"I can't give you an accurate result, but overall, it's going well." Connie handed a USB to Lu Zhou and said, "I've written a summary report on the research progress. It's in the C folder on the USB. I originally planned on sending it to your email."
Lu Zhou took the USB and nodded.
"Okay, I'll look at it later."
Connie looked at Lu Zhou's serious face and said excitedly, "Professor, you're finally planning on doing something?"
Lu Zhou said, "Yeah … Because of various reasons, I've been shifting my focus from mathematics to superconducting materials."
As for why, he obviously wouldn't say.
After Lu Zhou told Connie to do his own things, he walked to his desk and sat down. He plugged the USB into his computer and opened Connie's report.
After reading the report for half an hour, Lu Zhou had a general understanding of the progress of the research project.
Basically, the Pablo Jarillo-Herrero Laboratory, led by Professor Herrero, did theoretical research. They mainly researched the symmetry of the superconducting phase, pseudogap, nematic phase, etc.
The Jinling Institute of Computational Materials and Sarrot Laboratory did application research. They mainly used a large number of experiments to find a way to maintain the superconductivity while increasing the concentration of graphene carriers.
Professor Pablo Herrero was indeed a big name in the graphene field. After receiving US $10 million in funding from Star Sky Technology, the research progress was skyrocketing.
With the help of these theoretical results, the Jinling Institute of Computational Materials and Sarrot Laboratory also made many beautiful in-progress results in the field of application research.
However, there was still a long way to go.
Lu Zhou looked at the image on the computer screen and thought for a second. He quickly had a clear understanding of what he needed to do.
He was good at computational materials, using mathematical methods to find laws in materials science.
For him, the first thing he needed to do was to build a reliable mathematical model based on the data collected by the three laboratories over the past year.
Secondly, in order to speed up the project, he needed more people.
You've already exceeded your reading limit for today. If you want to read more, please log in.
Login
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
