Chapter 832 Revealing the Shape of the Universe

"Of course, old friend. You are the head of this institute, and this should be your job."

Landon Clay answered with a smile, almost without thinking.

but.

Then, his tone became serious:

"I only have one request, and that is to be quick."

"The Millennium Mathematics Conference will be held next month. If we want to attend, we must start building momentum before this month. Otherwise, it will be difficult to get an invitation."

But Arthur Jeff frowned.

As a mathematics professor, he showed considerable talent since he was young.

From childhood to adulthood, I have basically gotten full marks in all math tests.

In this way, he was admitted to Harvard University smoothly.

Then, the sky fell.

He soon realized that there was a gap between geniuses.

Just like the famous saying goes - every water cooler attendant in the NBA is the Jordan in his own life.

Every poor student in Harvard is also a genius in his or her own life.

Unfortunately, Arthur Jeff was one of them.

Of course, it is a bit of an exaggeration to say that he is a poor student.

After all, after graduating from Harvard, Jeff stayed on to teach and was promoted to professor.

It can even be said that I have stepped into the threshold of "mathematician".

But that's all.

After so many years, he already had a clearer understanding of himself——

It is already quite difficult to leave your name in history through serious academic achievements.

The only way is to take some unconventional approaches.

Therefore, he had to consider whether this would be his only chance in this life.

Millennium Math Problem.

A $1 million reward is offered for each person solved.

Enough of the gimmicks.

Even people who don't understand mathematics can at least understand the value of a million dollars.

The only problem is academia.

If the chosen problem is not of high enough theoretical and practical significance.

Or maybe it's simply not difficult enough, and within two years of your release, someone has cracked it in no time.

That will indeed go down in history.

It's just that he left his name in the image of a clown.

Therefore, we must be cautious enough in this matter.

After thinking for a while, Jeff proposed a compromise plan:

"Anyway, it's just for publicity. We just need to publicize the million-dollar bounty. As for the specific bounty list, we can keep it a secret and announce it at the conference. This way, the effect might be even better."

"fair enough."

Landon Clay was quick to respond:

"But at least we have to confirm the number of questions first. I mean, how many questions should be given as rewards? You just said that there may not be 23 questions left for me now."

In fact, if possible, he wanted to completely replicate Hilbert's operation.

But since the objective conditions do not allow it, if we are just one or two less than the opponent, we will be at a disadvantage.

It would be better to have less so that things are more valuable due to scarcity.

"So... seven?"

This time Jeff gave an answer quickly.

In fact, he has already determined about five or six questions in his mind. The reason why he chose 7 is that in many European and American cultures, 7 is a number with special meaning.

If you want to hype it up, you have to have all the elements in place.

"Ok, deal."

Clay nodded:

"In two days, a notice will be issued in the name of the Clay Institute's Scientific Advisory Committee, saying that in order to promote the development and application of mathematical theory, we have decided to offer a reward of seven million US dollars to the world for the answers to seven difficult mathematical problems..."

……

In the 90s and s, especially in the early to mid-s, the Chinese media's attention to foreign news was almost pathological.

It's not the kind of thing where something big happens abroad and then you pay attention to it.

But whether there is anything wrong or not, you should pay attention to it.

Even some media with official backgrounds will exaggerate and report trivial matters abroad.

You can say that this is the result of being surprised by the outside world after the initial opening up, and of course you can also say that this is flattering foreigners.

At the turn of the century, thanks to Chang Haonan's changes to the timeline, some Chinese people's views of foreign countries, especially the United States, have become somewhat shattered.

But on the other hand, due to the changes he made to the timeline, the accumulated emotions among the Chinese people have also weakened a lot.

After all, what happened in early 96 happened a long time ago.

The successful entry into the WTO at the beginning of the year has rekindled the fantasies of some people about the West.

In short, although the situation has improved compared to the 90s, big news like the "$700 million reward" still quickly spread to the country.

The efficiency is comparable to the self-media era more than 20 years later.

However, Chang Haonan did not pay attention to it at the first time.

When Tang Lintian ran to the computer center excitedly with the newspaper in hand to look for him, he only got the answer that "Professor Chang is closed to visitors and is concentrating on solving key problems" -

After Chang Haonan and Li Yabo returned from Shanghai after attending the evidence collection celebration ceremony, they went straight into the computer room.

For more than half a month, except for occasionally coming out to eat, I even slept in there.

Because the Ricci flow truncation method that we had been searching for through supercomputers has produced results.

Perelman successfully gave two lemmas that lead directly to the canonical domain hypothesis and the long-lived existence hypothesis.

That is, suppose M is a three-dimensional compact simply connected manifold. It is easy to know that it is orientable, and any given metric on M is normal through scaling. Then, using this normal metric as the initial value, we can definitely obtain the surgical Ricci flow.

Next, as long as we prove that the solution can disappear in a finite time, we can deduce that M is diffeomorphic to S^3 from the simple connectivity of M.

That is [Theorem 1] in the whole proof process.

Poincare conjecture - Any simply connected, closed three-dimensional manifold must be homeomorphic to a three-dimensional sphere.

The fact that "the solution can disappear within a finite time" is exactly what Chang Haonan needs the supercomputer to help him find.

In other words, this proof has been closed.

In fact, it goes a step further than the series of proofs given by Perelman between 2002 and 2003.

Because Chang Haonan also dealt with the problem of "singular points" appearing in Ricci flow during the proof process.

This can be regarded as directly capping the Poincare conjecture, a skyscraper in the field of mathematics.

"call……"

Looking at the contents on the draft paper in front of him, Chang Haonan breathed a sigh of relief.

He believed that Perelman, 6000 kilometers away, should be doing the same thing as he was.

Moreover, the progress is almost the same.

He picked up a cup of strong tea from the side and took two big gulps.

In the past, Chang Haonan basically only drank plain water.

However, in recent days, he discovered that tea can indeed have a refreshing effect.

It just so happened that I just got some from Tang Lintian a few days ago, so I started to soak it up.

"It can be considered as blocking a way for those who come later..."

If the proof process of Chang Haonan and Perelman is broken down, it can probably produce a dozen or twenty papers at the level of the Annals of Mathematics.

wrong……

It's already a mathematics yearbook, so it can't be said to be water.

In short, it leaves future generations with no way to go in this direction.

At least at this moment, Chang Haonan can say with confidence:

No one knows topology better than me...

It wasn't until the notification sound of a new email came back to his senses.

From Perelman.

[In your opinion, how should we publish the entire proof process? ]

This was the first email between the two since they met that did not mention any academic issues.

But it undoubtedly shows that

The other party also succeeded.

The two people cross-checked each other's results and eventually came to the same conclusion.

This largely avoids repeating the mistakes of Alfred Whitehead or Papa Chilakopoulos.

Both of them once thought that they had proved the Poincare conjecture, but within a very short period of time, errors were found in the initial stages of their proofs.

As for the issues mentioned in the email...

In his previous life, Perelman, who had solved the problem alone, chose to make it public directly to the world.

To be honest, just half a year ago, Chang Haonan, who had just started to study the Poincare conjecture, did not quite understand the other party's ideas.

But now.

Faced with nearly a hundred pages of proof process.

Facing the ups and downs of nearly a century from 1904 to the present.

He actually had the same idea...

Chang Haonan put his hands on the keyboard.

Strings of characters quickly appeared on the screen:

[Our work is to depict the specific appearance of the four-dimensional universe in the three-dimensional world. Such achievements that transcend dimensions should naturally not be constrained by a specific journal.]

[So I suggest that you skip those publishers and publish directly to the world in a completely open form! ]