Chapter 837 Luxurious Review Team

Wiles, who likes to watch the fun, suddenly felt a little impatient.

He probably couldn't understand this paper.

So he needed to find a professional.

Although so-called professionals couldn't understand it immediately.

But at least he could confirm whether there were obvious omissions.

Perelman was certainly not a folk scientist, but there were indeed many cases in history where mathematicians thought they had solved an important problem, but were found to have made mistakes at a very early stage.

Especially from the perspective of the rather extraordinary length of this paper, it is likely that some new theoretical frameworks will be involved.

Generally speaking, thanks to the great development of academic journals and the Internet, even if today's mathematicians need to invent the wheel from scratch, they have enough opportunities to take the wheel out separately for everyone to see first, so as to avoid the situation of "finding the wheel is square only after the car is built".

But the situation in front of us is obviously not ordinary.

According to Wiles's speculation, the two authors may have been working hard for many years to prove the Poincare conjecture.

And this paper in front of us should be the sum of all their work.

As for the previous article in the Annals of Mathematics...

It is likely that it was just published so that the author named Chang Haonan would not appear too abruptly.

Yeah, that must be the case.

Thinking of this, Wiles looked around and asked Koncevic next to him:

"I remember... Richard Hamilton is here today, right?"

When he opened the paper just now, he noticed that the concept of "Ricci flow" was mentioned many times in the abstract at the beginning.

Even though Wiles did not study topology, he knew who was an expert in this field.

"I think I saw him on the other side of the venue before."

Koncevic replied.

"Let's go find him."

At this time, Wiles did not care that Arthur Jeff was still answering questions on the stage. He immediately left his seat with his laptop and pulled Koncevic to the other side of the aisle in the middle of the venue.

Arash was a little confused by the scene in front of him, but he could only choose to quickly catch up with his mentor.

Fortunately, there were more than a thousand people attending the conference today, and everyone's attention was focused on the front, so few people noticed that the two Fields Medal winners were running around in the middle of the venue like thieves...

Koncevic had a good memory.

Under his leadership, the three of them found Hamilton, who was sitting in the second row on the right side of the venue, in a short time.

The latter was listening to Arthur Jeff's explanation of why the famous Goldbach conjecture was not included in the seven major problems with a happy face, and he was obviously in a good mood.

After all, he had always firmly believed that using the Ricci flow equation would make it possible to prove Thurston's geometrization conjecture and Poincare conjecture.

"Professor Wiles? Professor Koncevic?"

Hamilton subconsciously wanted to stand up.

These two still have a certain status in the mathematical world.

Especially Andrew Wiles.

Although some people believe that his proof method does not meet Fermat's description of "exquisite", so Fermat's Last Theorem may have other proofs.

But no matter what, this problem that lasted for 350 years and stumped Gauss, Euler, Hilbert and other great men was finally solved by Wiles.

This alone is enough to make him one of the most influential mathematicians in the world.

However, Wiles was quick-witted and quickly stopped Hamilton's action:

"Professor Hamilton, this morning, to be precise, just now, my students saw a paper."

He opened his laptop and put it on the small table in front of him.

Hamilton thought that he couldn't wait to read the paper, and he had to come to me at this time, but he saw the title of the paper when he turned his eyes.

"Any simply connected, closed three-dimensional manifold must be homeomorphic to a three-dimensional sphere"

?

He was just thinking about the proof of the Poincare conjecture, but now there is a paper saying that it has been proved?

"Which publisher received this submission?"

Before checking the specific content, Hamilton asked almost subconsciously.

Wiles looked at Arash beside him and shook his head:

"It's not a publishing house, it's the arXiv website, maybe you should have heard of it."

"Of course I know that, the website address is marked in the upper left corner of the document."

Hamilton pointed to the computer screen and continued:

"What I mean is that when the author posts the article on arXiv, he must submit it to a magazine, right?"

There was a silence.

Obviously, no one could give an answer.

It is already very abnormal for such a paper to appear on arXiv, and it is also normal for something more abnormal to happen later...

Hamilton had to turn the document down.

Then, he saw a familiar name.

It was not Perelman, but Chang Haonan.

About half a year ago, he saw the article of this author while reviewing for the Annals of Mathematics.

Hamilton can even remember the content of the article clearly.

One of the conclusions is that the topological surgery performed using Ricci flow can be used to construct geometric structures, thereby transforming irregular manifolds into regular manifolds.

That conclusion played a considerable role in promoting his status in academic circles.

And since Chang Haonan chose the Annual Journal of Mathematics for submission last time, it seems reasonable to continue to choose the Annual Journal of Mathematics this time, even if it is based on inertia...

Hamilton even wanted to take out his cell phone and call Mikael Lagerstedt to ask if there was such an article.

But in the end I endured it.

On the one hand, after all, we are all scholars, so we should be more reserved.

What's more, he has now seen the paper.

And the publisher, no matter which one it is, obviously hasn't seen it yet.

Otherwise, for such a big matter, we should have directly contacted all the well-known scholars in the relevant fields.

This means that compared to his peers such as John Morgan, Bruce Kleiner, and Valentin Benahou, he has already won at the starting line.

When an editor saw it and found someone to review it, as a representative of the geometric topology route, he saw the paper earlier than others.

There is a high probability that it can be the leader of the review team.

No need to add extraneous details.

With this thought in mind, Hamilton returned his attention to the computer screen.

This is how academic work is. The author of the paper only needs to immerse himself in scientific research, but the reviewer has many things to consider...

However, it didn't take long.

Hamilton's smile gradually froze on his face——

Although Ricci flow was mentioned many times in the abstract and introduction, and even his achievements in introducing Ricci flow into topology were cited, but...

Not quite the same.

"How about it, Professor Hamilton?"

Looking at Hamilton with an unpredictable expression on his face, Wiles asked.

"Something's wrong..."

Hamilton muttered.

Wiles was stunned, thinking that the other party had discovered the error in the paper:

"Oh...surely there is still a problem..."

Although it was expected, it is still a bit regretful.

Firstly, I couldn’t really witness history.

Secondly, I didn’t have the fun of seeing the seven major math problems turn into the six major ones live.

However, Hamilton shook his head:

"There's nothing wrong with the paper."

Three doubtful glances were cast at him.

"I have a problem..."

"Ah?"

Wiles was a little confused by this sentence:

"Aren't you the founder of Ricci flow theory?"

"Hmm... I used to think so too."

Hamilton still stared at the screen intently:

"But I'm not so sure now..."

"What...what do you mean?"

Koncevich, who had not spoken just now, looked puzzled.

Hamilton shook his head in distress:

"Although Rich flow is also used, their ideas...are completely different."

"Look here, they built the Ricci flow into Lindelof space."

"And here, we perform surgery on the Ricci flow to find and eliminate the singularity before it occurs. This is what I have been working on for the past ten years..."

"..."

In just the first five pages of his paper, Hamilton lists a dozen key points.

All are differences between the paper's ideas and existing theories.

It can be said that this is a completely different theoretical framework.

"but……"

Wiles frowned:

"The speed at which you turned the pages just now... was like reading a paper written by yourself."

"I mean, if they really came up with a completely new theoretical framework, shouldn't it be very difficult to understand?"

After hearing this question, Hamilton finally raised his head:

"If Perelman had written this paper alone, I believe that would be the case."

"But another author, Chang Haonan, I found during the last review that the paper he wrote has a very different idea than ordinary people, but every step can be written in a place that is not easy for us to understand."

Koncevich was also surprised:

"Can there be such a person?"

Of course he knows that understanding something himself and letting others understand it are two completely different things.

In fact, one of the major problems currently facing the mathematics community is that as research fields continue to be subdivided and the depth of research in a single field increases, it is increasingly difficult for top mathematicians to understand the results achieved by others.

For a truly influential paper, the review cycle often stretches to several years.

It may not even be possible to find out.

And the ability of Chang Haonan mentioned by Hamilton is completely refreshing in today's context.

"Anyway...what do you think is the probability that they are right?"

Wiles asked.

Hamilton did not answer immediately, but just lowered his head, rubbing his eyebrows and closing his eyes to think.

"I'm afraid no one dares to draw a conclusion on this matter alone."

After a long time, he finally opened his eyes again:

"I need to ask other people's opinions."

"who?"

"Sergey Novikov, Michael Friedman, Simon Donaldson, Jeff Chigurh, Valentin Benahou..."

He said nearly ten names in a row.

Wiles was secretly shocked when he heard this.

Basically covers all topology experts of the previous generation and this generation.

These include three Fields Medal winners.

But it's not over yet.

After a short pause, Hamilton suddenly turned his head again:

"In addition, their proof mentioned a lot of physical concepts such as 'energy', 'entropy' and 'temperature', so we need a mathematician with a theoretical physics background."

"Professor Kongtsevich, I hope you can join us..."

"Okay, now there are four..."

Wiles thought to himself:

"Maybe there is a fifth..."