Chapter 836: Seven Major Problems Become Six? (Japanese)

As usual, there is a Q&A session at the end.

Everyone in the audience raised their arms——

Perhaps 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 speak first.

Judging from her age, she may not have even graduated from a bachelor's degree.

"Professor Jeff, regarding your reward, can you get it just by solving 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 can summarize the two more important points here."

"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.

Therefore, it is reasonable to set some thresholds.

After a slight pause, Jeff continued:

"Second, the official awards will be given at least one year after the results are published."

In contrast, this one caused little response——

Solving problems at the level of the Seven Hard Problems is often accompanied by the emergence of a new theoretical framework, resulting in papers that must be extremely long and difficult to understand.

One year...

Reviews 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 was exactly what Jeff wanted, so much so that he even doubted whether the other party was 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 that are also of great value..."

“Take Poincaré’s conjecture as an example. Although it is generally believed in the mathematical community that geometric topology methods seem to be more suitable to solve this problem than direct topology solutions, in the process of trying to solve it, direct topology It has still achieved tremendous development. In short, compared to the final ownership of the US$7 million, we hope that everyone will pay more 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 listened to Jeff's talk and 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.

Math stuff, no one can give an exact 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.

But he found out 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, Koncevic 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. We have already entered the question period."

After hearing this, Arash raised his head almost subconsciously, and then his whole body trembled suddenly:

"The seventh item...is...Poincaré's conjecture?"

"That's right."

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 the Poincaré conjecture has been proved!"

"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.

In disciplines such as computer science and biology, the emergence of new ideas and the production of papers are so efficient that conventional review cannot keep up with the rate of innovation of results. Therefore, it is very important to take advantage of arXiv first.

But the efficiency of mathematical papers from ideas to papers...

Sometimes it is measured in centuries.

More importantly, Arthur Jeff on the stage just made a joke about amateur scientists.

And arXiv, a website that can be published without review, is undoubtedly the place with the most amateur scientists.

Wiles even suspected that it was probably a prank by someone after watching the live broadcast.

However...

"But the co-authors of this paper are Grigoriy Perelman and a Chinese named Chang Haonan."

Arash's answer almost made Wiles, who was originally sitting still, jump up.

"Are you sure it's...that Perelman?"

Arash nodded:

"I clicked in and looked at it, and I'm very sure."

While speaking, he had already taken out the laptop.

But before he could press the power button, it was taken away by Wiles.

There was no trace of the calmness of "everything is under control" just now.

"Teacher, you..."

Arash originally wanted to ask, teacher, as a number theorist, can you understand the proof process of this geometric topology?

But after thinking about it, he felt that if he really asked this question, the relationship between teacher and student would be ruined.

So he said two words and shut up.

Fortunately, Wiles had no time to care about what his student said at this time.

He took out his glasses from his pocket and put them on, then opened the PDF that Arash downloaded to the desktop.

"It's really Perelman..."

In fact, when he saw the first page of this article, most of his doubts about the amateur scientist had been dispelled--

After all...

Wiles had never seen an amateur scientist who could write the paper format so clearly...

"This Chang Haonan, how come I seem to have heard of him somewhere..."

He looked at the information of another author and said to himself:

"Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics..."

Koncevic next to him suddenly said:

"In the December issue of the Annals of Mathematics last year, he published a paper proving two lemmas that have been pending in the field of differential geometry."

After his old friend reminded him, Wiles also had an impression:

"Is it him?"

Wiles still remembered that he had talked about that issue of the Annals of Mathematics with a colleague who was studying topology.

Although the core of the topic at that time was not Chang Haonan's paper, the other party still mentioned inadvertently that the result might have a driving effect on the proof of the Poincare conjecture.

But...

Isn't this too fast?

He was just thinking that it would take at most a month or at most a century to solve one of the seven problems.

I thought I had given myself enough room for maneuver.

What happened?

If the proof process in this paper is confirmed, it will be interesting.

Seven major mathematical problems of the millennium.

It doesn't take a month.

It's not even an hour.

The person who posted the problem is still standing on the stage.

It will become six major problems...