Chapter 836: Seven major problems changed to six? (10,000 per day)
As usual, there is a question and answer session at the end.
The audience all raised their arms——
Maybe the professors are more reserved in this situation.
But students don’t care.
And there are many students who are encouraged by their tutors to ask questions.
Soon, a young woman sitting in the third row was selected by Jeff to be the first to speak.
Judging from her age, she may not have even graduated from a bachelor's degree.
"Professor Jeff, regarding your reward, can you get it as long as you solve the problem? Or are there other requirements?"
In fact, this is an issue that most people are concerned about.
"Of course there are some specific requirements."
Jeff motioned for the other party to sit down first:
"The specific terms will be listed in detail in the documentation on our institute's homepage. I am here We can summarize two important points. "
"First, the results cannot be mailed directly to our institute, but must be published on a widely recognized academic platform, and the final conclusion needs to be given by the mathematics community. ”
“As you know, the institute’s power is limited and it is impossible to spend all its energy on dealing with letters from folk mathematics enthusiasts. ”
After hearing what he said, the audience burst into laughter.
Who is a serious mathematician, especially one who is engaged in number theory, who has not received dozens or hundreds of letters from top-notch people claiming to have proved Ge Guai or the Riemann Hypothesis?
Even after Andrew Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem, people continued to send letters to mathematical institutes in various countries, claiming that his proof method was wrong, or simply did not know that such a thing was happening.
So, it is reasonable to set some thresholds.
After a slight pause, Jeff continued:
“Second, the official awards will not be given until one year after the results are published at the earliest.”
In contrast, this article has attracted little response——
To solve the seven major problems Problems at the level of hard problems are often accompanied by the emergence of new theoretical frameworks, resulting in papers that are extremely long and difficult to understand.
One year...
The review may not yield results.
After answering the first question, Jeff called up the second young man.
“Professor Jeff, I would like to know, according to your estimate, how soon will it be possible for the first person to receive this bonus from your institute?”
This question played right into Jeff's heart, so much so that he even doubted whether the other party was a hired agent hired by his boss.
“That’s a good question.”
Jeff replied:
"In fact, the reason why we offer a high reward of US$1 million for each problem is not only because the problems themselves are of profound significance to the development of science, but also because in the process of solving these problems, mathematicians There will be some by-products of great value..."
"Take the Poincaré conjecture as an example. Although it is generally believed in the mathematics community that geometric topology methods seem to be more suitable for use than direct topology solutions. To solve this problem, but in the process of trying to solve it, direct topology has still made great progress. In short, compared to the final attribution of these 7 million US dollars, we hope that everyone will pay attention to science and mathematics..."
"Of course, if you definitely want to get an answer, then I think an optimistic estimate might be 10-15 years..."
In the audience, Andrew Wiles listens Listening to Jeff's talk, he nodded slightly.
What the latter said just now, whether it was sincere or for propaganda purposes, has indeed greatly improved his perception of the other party.
As for that 10-15 year estimate...
Wiles just laughed it off.
Mathematical stuff, no one can give an accurate timetable.
Maybe next month, maybe next century.
Who can say for sure?
And at this time.
A familiar voice suddenly sounded from behind him:
"Teacher? Teacher!"
Wiles was stunned for a moment, then turned around.
Only he discovered that it was Arash who was "punished" by himself and banned from attending the meeting in the morning.
The latter looked a little pale for some reason, as if he had just been seriously ill.
"Arash?"
At this time, Koncevich next to him also turned around and saw the young man he remembered at a glance yesterday, and couldn't help joking:
"You may not have come at the right time. Now we have entered the question period."
After hearing this, Arash raised his head almost subconsciously, and then his whole body trembled:
"The seventh item...is...Poincaré's conjecture?"
"Yes."
Wiles frowned slightly, but nodded.
Although he didn't care about the $10, he was still a little upset about losing the bet:
"What do you want to say?"
"Old...Teacher." Arash gasped a few times:
"I just saw a paper on arXiv, saying that it has proved the Poincaré conjecture! ”
“arXiv? ”
Compared to Arash who was a little over-excited, Wiles’ reaction was obviously much calmer.
Although arXiv has gained good recognition in the academic community, it is definitely not able to compete head-on with leading journals.
Disciplines such as computer science and biology are very efficient in the emergence of new ideas and paper output, so high that regular review can’t keep up with the rate of innovation of results. Therefore, it is very important to take advantage of arXiv first. important.
But the productivity of mathematics papers from ideas to papers...
Sometimes that is measured in centuries.
What's more important is that Arthur Jeff on the stage just made a joke about civil science.
And arXiv, a website that can publish without approval, is undoubtedly the place with the most civil science.
Wiles even suspected that someone might have played a prank after seeing the live broadcast.
However...
“However, the co-authors of this paper are Grigory Perelman and a Chinese named ChangHaonan.”
Arash's answer made Wiles, who was sitting still, almost jump.
"Are you sure it's...that Perelman?"
Arash nodded:
"I specifically clicked in and looked at it, I'm very sure."
The one who spoke At the same time, he had taken out his laptop.
But before he could press the power button, Wiles took it away.
There is no trace of the calmness of "everything is under control" just now.
"Teacher, you..."
Arash originally wanted to ask, teacher, as a number theory practitioner, can you understand the proof process of geometric topology?
But after thinking about it, I felt that if I really asked this question, the relationship between teacher and student would probably be over.
That’s why I said a few words and then shut up.
Fortunately, Wiles had no time to care about what his students said at this time.
He took out his glasses from his pocket and put them on, then opened the PDF that Arash had downloaded to the desktop.
“It’s really Perelman…”
In fact, when I saw the first page of this article, most of my doubts about Minke had been dispelled——
After all...
Wiles had never seen a civil science student who could write the paper format so clearly...
"How come this Chang Haonan seems to have been heard of somewhere..."
He looked Looking at the information from another author, he said to himself:
"Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics..."
Koncevich next to him suddenly said:
"In the Annals of Mathematics last December, he published a paper proving two lemmas that have been pending in the field of differential geometry."
After being reminded by an old friend, Wiles also had an impression:
“Is it him?”
Wiles still remembers chatting with a colleague who was studying topology about that issue of the Annual Journal of Mathematics.
Although the core of the topic at that time was not Chang Haonan's paper, the other party still inadvertently mentioned that that result might promote the proof of Poincaré's conjecture.
But...
Isn’t this push too fast?
He was still pondering just now, saying that it would take a month or a century at the earliest to be able to solve any of the seven previous problems.
I thought I had left enough room for maneuver.
The result is good guys.
It would be interesting if the proof in this paper was confirmed.
Seven major mathematical problems of the millennium.
Which takes one month.
That's not even an hour.
The poster of the question is still standing on the stage.
It is about to become the Big Six...
(End of this chapter)