Lu Zhou had been in academia for many years, but this was the first time he had heard of a journal editor suggesting splitting a thesis into two.
Most of the time, the academic editor of the journal felt that the contributor was too weak, so they split the topic into two or even several parts to publish. Then, they cited their own paper to increase the number of citations, so they sent the paper back to the contributor to rewrite it.
This was the kind of situation where the author felt that there was too much information in the thesis and asked the author to change the thesis into two separate papers …
This was the first time this had happened.
"Inference 1 is one of the core problems in differential topology that discusses manifold classification …" Lu Zhou stared at the email and rubbed his chin. "Sullivan's conjecture? What the hell, I've never heard of it. "
As he muttered, he kicked the suitcase aside, got up, walked out of the cloakroom, and quickly walked upstairs.
He sat in front of his computer and opened the database to search for related terms. Soon, something surprising happened to Lu Zhou.
Lines of papers that had been retrieved flew in front of him like snowflakes.
He would have never known.
He did not expect this proposition to be quite popular.
However, the authors of the most cited theses did not look familiar. This Sullivan's conjecture should be a proposition that was not related to other disciplines, but was relatively important in this field.
Just like the twin prime conjecture.
Most people who were not in additive number theory would not study this sh * tty thing.
"Jesus Christ, I was wondering why this thing was so difficult. I thought about it for the whole day! So it really is a mathematical conjecture?! "
In short, the thesis he submitted to Annual Mathematics, which was seven and a half pages long, actually proved an equivalent form of Sullivan's conjecture for smooth complex complete intersection.
This conjecture was about the popular classification of smooth manifolds, and it had been proposed for more than half a century.
The classification of smooth manifolds was one of the core problems in differential topology!
This meant that this problem that he had unintentionally solved had actually troubled the differential topology community for more than half a century …
After reading the documents, Lu Zhou's heart was filled with emotion.
On one hand, he was impressed by how awesome he was. On the other hand, he was impressed by Professor Chen's capabilities.
The hyperelliptic curve analysis method was a classic proposition in differential topology.
"Anyway … If the Sullivan conjecture is true, then the hyperelliptic curve analysis method can be introduced into differential manifolds."
"If I can take this step, I will be one step closer to the end of the Riemann conjecture."
"I wonder how many more steps are left …"
Lu Zhou looked at the thesis on his computer screen. He then opened the original thesis and reformatted the content.
This task was actually very simple. He just had to take out Inference 1 from the original thesis, add a few lines of abstract, and submit it as an independent thesis.
As for the title of the thesis, Professor Frakes had already thought of it for him.
Which was, "Proof of the Sullivan conjecture on smooth complex complete intersections."
As for the original thesis, he just added a line of citation to the citation section, then directly used the proposition he proved as a theorem in the thesis.
Lu Zhou spent around ten minutes to finish this work. He then repackaged the thesis and sent it to Professor Frakes' email.
After Lu Zhou was done, he was about to send an email to tell Professor Chen Yang about this interesting event. He suddenly remembered that when he submitted the thesis, he put the preprint of the thesis on arXiv.
Even though he rarely revised manuscripts, according to academic practice, if he revised the thesis according to the academic editor or reviewer's opinion, the preprint on arXiv should also be updated at the same time.
Lu Zhou immediately logged into his arXiv account. However, when he was about to delete the original preprint and update the two separate theses, he was shocked by the number of downloads of the original thesis.
22,000 downloads!
"F * ck me, it's only been two days, and the number of downloads is this high?!"
Generally speaking, even for a relatively popular research direction, it was quite impressive for a preprint to have hundreds of downloads after being uploaded.
Theses that had tens of thousands of downloads were usually theses that had been up for a long time, and they had to be in a popular research field.
Differential topology itself wasn't a particularly popular branch of mathematics, especially in the field of manifold classification. There weren't even 20,000 scholars in the world in this field, let alone people who were tagged on arXiv.
Therefore, the number of downloads was a bit strange.
There was only one possibility.
That was, his thesis had caused quite a lot of discussion within a certain range.
Moreover, the popularity of this topic had reached the point where scholars in other fields were looking at him curiously …
Suddenly, Lu Zhou realized something. He immediately logged into his MathOverflow account.
Just like he expected, on this world-renowned mathematics industry forum, the topic of his thesis had occupied the main page of the discussion section …
[Wow, did anyone read Professor Lu's latest thesis?]
[I just read it, it seems to be a supplement to the hyperelliptic curve analysis method … What's so special about it?]
[The key isn't the thesis itself! It's the first inference in the thesis! If you guys aren't in differential topology, you might not know that it's actually another form of Sullivan's conjecture! I looked at it for a long time and suddenly found it!]
[When I was a master's student, I studied differential topology. Apparently, he and his supervisor are working on the classification of differential manifolds. I just asked him how he felt about the thesis, and he told me that it was nutty. Then, he went into seclusion. What should I tell him to get over it? I'm waiting online, it's urgent …]
[No wonder he's Professor Lu, he's able to come up with such f * cking results.]
[I feel like I wasted my years of studying differential manifolds … (crying emoji)]
[I'm missing a topic for tomorrow's discussion class, so I'll borrow this preprint: P]
Lu Zhou browsed through the posts and finally solved the case. He couldn't help but sigh.
"These people are so bored."
If they had the time, they might as well find some interesting problems to research.
Didn't I just solve a conjecture?
They're making a fuss about nothing …
Lu Zhou shook his head and closed his browser. He then closed his laptop and threw this matter aside.
Annual Mathematics would help him contact a qualified reviewer to complete the peer review process.
Select text and click 'Report' to let us know about any bad translation.
