For most journals, editors did not necessarily have strong academic abilities. They were mainly responsible for checking the format and word count of the thesis, and then contacting professional reviewers for the manuscripts that passed the review. Based on the opinions of the reviewers, they would decide whether the thesis could pass the review.
However, this was only true for most journals.
For a journal like Annual Mathematics, founded by Princeton, the editor-in-chief was usually a big name in the academic community.
For example, the former editor-in-chief, Peter Sarnak, was a big name in the number theory world. He was also the winner of the 2014 Wolf Prize in Mathematics.
As the third editor-in-chief after Professor Peter Sarnak, even though Professor Frakes wasn't as famous as he was in recent years, his ability was undeniable. If he wasn't over forty years old, he would have a chance of winning a Fields Award with his research results in the field of differential manifolds.
Of course, the reason why Annual Mathematics chose him as the editor-in-chief wasn't just because of his academic abilities. There was another reason.
Because controllable nuclear fusion was a global phenomenon, plasma physics was also becoming more and more popular. A few years ago, the "L Manifold" was used to solve the Navier – Stokes equation and the plasma turbulence problem. Over the past few years, countries around the world had been investing more resources in the field of partial differential equations and differential manifolds. This encouraged their scholars to enter these fields.
Even though Annual Mathematics rarely followed hot topics, ever since Professor Lu's Navier – Stokes equations report, there hadn't been any outstanding results in the field of partial differential equations and differential manifolds. It was as if Professor Lu had sucked all the energy out of the entire field.
Therefore, choosing Professor Frakes as the editor-in-chief was also because the Board of Directors of Annual Mathematics wanted to support partial differential equations and differential manifolds.
Normally speaking, when the editor-in-chief arranged for a thesis to be submitted, they would have a certain bias towards their own research field …
Princeton.
Editorial department of Annual Mathematics.
Professor Frakes, who was taking over from the previous editor-in-chief, had already moved his office into the editorial department with his students. He was busy dealing with the mountain of work.
Even though the editor-in-chief of the Annual Mathematics Journal didn't take this job seriously, Frakes was different. He could only be regarded as a small fry, especially in a place like Princeton, where there were hidden dragons and crouching tigers. It could be said that he had no sense of existence at all.
Other people didn't care about the academic qualifications of the editor-in-chief of Annual Mathematics, but Frakes didn't care. Therefore, he took this job very seriously. To a certain extent, he even temporarily put aside his own research project.
A PhD student with curly hair sat in front of a computer full of documents. He took a sip of coffee and stared at the screen. His eyes suddenly widened, and he coughed as if he was choking.
"… Professor, cough cough! You received a submission letter in your email! "
Professor Frakes was busy with the matter at hand, so he didn't have time to look up. He casually replied, "Print it out for me, I'll take a look when I have time."
"But … The person who submitted it is Lu Zhou."
Professor Frakes suddenly stopped typing on the keyboard. He stood up from his chair and quickly walked toward the PhD student's desk.
"Give me the computer!"
"Oh, okay …"
Frakes sat in front of his computer and checked every letter in the email address. After he confirmed that the manuscript was indeed sent by Professor Lu, he excitedly downloaded the PDF file attached to the email.
"Let me see what interesting results Professor Lu has come up with …"
One of the most direct benefits of being an editor of a well-known journal was that he could immediately know what amazing research results the big names had made.
Professor Frakes was looking forward to seeing the thesis that he had just downloaded.
However, when he saw the content of the abstract, the excitement in his eyes gradually turned into a trace of disappointment.
The curly-haired PhD student noticed the change in his supervisor's expression, and he whispered, "What?"
"It's not a new research result, it's just a supplement to the hyperelliptic curve analysis method." Professor Frakes shook his head and said in a disappointed tone, "It's a bit cold, not an outstanding result."
The PhD student asked, "Then … Should we reject the manuscript?"
"I don't think so." Professor Frakes shook his head and said, "If it's not long and it's important enough, it can be passed … Anyway, let the reviewers worry about this. It's too offensive to pass a manuscript outside of peer review … Yeah, help me print out the thesis, I'll think about it."
"Okay, professor."
The printer began to buzz.
Soon, the thesis was printed on the paper.
Professor Frakes returned to his seat with the warm thesis paper. He drank his coffee while reading the main body of the thesis.
Honestly speaking, after he finished reading the abstract, he didn't have high expectations for the research results in this thesis.
However, when he reached the third page, he suddenly let out a soft gasp.
"… When n is greater than 2, two n-dimensional complex complete intersection X ^ n (d), X ^ n (d ') is diffeomorphism if and only if their Euler number, total degree, and Pontrjagin class are all equal …"
"… Why does this inference look so familiar?"
It wasn't a direct sense of familiarity, but it was a comprehensible sense of familiarity.
It was as if he had seen the inference in another form in that place.
Professor Frakes didn't see any citations, so he sat up from his chair and picked up a ballpoint pen to write on the draft paper next to him.
However, his brush had only gone past two lines on the paper when it stopped there.
"…"
This … This line of expression!
Could it be …
Professor Frakes' pupils contracted, and he suddenly stood up from his seat.
"Sullivan's conjecture?!"
This conjecture was made by Professor Sullivan when he was researching "classifying simply connected manifolds with finite uncertainty" and "rational homotopy types". It was a classification problem for smooth manifolds.
It was also one of the core problems in differential topology!
It was normal for people who didn't understand differential topology not to have heard of this conjecture. After all, this conjecture was a branch of mathematics. Even though this conjecture was important to people in this field, it was far from well-known.
Because of the difficulty of this conjecture, there weren't many people who researched this topic. Even though Frakes was an expert in differential topology, he didn't know that this conjecture was actually just another form of expression.
However, Lu Zhou didn't understand this conjecture at all, and he didn't even understand differential topology, yet he was able to produce this kind of research result. This was a bit scary …
Judging from the fact that there was no citation for this inference, it was obvious that Professor Lu didn't know that the inference he wrote in his thesis was actually another form of Sullivan's conjecture …
Professor Frakes's face was full of shock. Even his fingers that were holding the thesis were trembling.
Dr. Curly Hair, who was sitting at a nearby desk, thought something had happened. He hurriedly asked, "What's wrong, Professor?"
Professor Frakes didn't know if he heard his student's question or not.
Professor Frakes stared at the thesis and muttered to himself in an excited tone.
"Jesus Christ …
"We found a treasure!"
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