Chapter 836: 7 major problems become 6 major problems? (Japanese)

As usual, there is a question-and-answer session at the end.

The audience raised their arms in unison.

Perhaps professors are more reserved in this situation.

But students don't care.

Furthermore, many students were encouraged by their own tutors to ask questions.

Soon, a young woman sitting in the third row was chosen by Jeff to speak first.

Judging from her age, she may not even have graduated from college.

"Professor Jeff, regarding your reward, can we get it as long as we solve the problem? Or are there any other requirements?"

In fact, this is a question 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 description document on our institute's homepage. I can summarize two 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 mathematics community needs to give a final conclusion.”

"You know, the institute's resources are limited. We can't spend all our energy on dealing with letters from folk mathematics enthusiasts."

When he said this, the audience burst into laughter.

Who among those who study mathematics seriously, especially number theory, has not received dozens or even hundreds of letters from amateur scientists claiming to have proved the Goldbach conjecture or the Riemann hypothesis?

Even after Andrew Wiles proved Fermat's Last Theorem, people continued to send letters to mathematical institutes around the world, claiming that his proof was wrong or that they simply didn't know it existed.

Therefore, it is reasonable to set some threshold.

After a brief pause, Jeff continued:

“Second, the award will be officially presented at least one year after the results are published.”

In contrast, this one hardly caused any response -

Solving problems of the level of the seven major problems is often accompanied by the emergence of a completely new theoretical framework, which means that the paper will inevitably be extremely long and difficult to understand.

One year...

Even peer review may not produce results.

After answering the first question, Jeff called the second young man.

"Professor Jeff, I want to know, according to your estimate, how long will it take for the first person to receive the prize money from your institute?"

This question hit the mark exactly what Jeff wanted, so much so that he even suspected that the other party was a hired agent by his boss.

"That's a good question."

Jeff replied:

“In fact, the reason why we offer a high reward of $100 million for each problem is not only because these problems themselves have profound significance for the development of science, but also because mathematicians will obtain some equally valuable by-products in the process of solving these problems…”

"Take the Poincare conjecture as an example. Although the mathematical community generally believes that geometric topology is more suitable for solving this problem than direct topology, direct topology has still made great progress in the process of trying to solve it. In short, compared to the final destination of the $700 million, we hope that everyone will pay more attention to science and mathematics..."

"Of course, if you really want an answer, then I think the optimistic estimate might be 10-15 years..."

In the audience, Andrew Wiles listened to Jeff's talk and nodded slightly.

The latter's words just now, whether they were sincere or for publicity purposes, did greatly improve his impression of the other party.

As for that 10-15 year estimate…

Wiles just laughed it off.

No one can give an exact timetable for mathematical things.

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 at first, then turned around.

But he found out that it was Arash who was "punished" by himself and was forbidden to attend the meeting in the morning.

For some reason, the latter looked a little pale, as if he had just had a serious illness.

"Arash?"

At this time, Kong Cevic, who was standing next to him, also turned around and saw the young man whom he had remembered at first sight yesterday. He couldn't help but joked:

"You may have come at a bad time. We have already entered the question-and-answer session."

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

"The seventh item... is... the Poincare 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 panted a few times:

“I just saw a paper on arXiv that claims to have proved the Poincare conjecture!”

“arXiv?”

Compared to Arash who was a little overly excited, Wiles' reaction was obviously much calmer.

Although arXiv has gained a good degree of recognition in the academic community, it is definitely not at the level where it can compete head-on with top journals.

In subjects like computer science and biology, the emergence of new ideas and the production of papers are so efficient that even regular peer review cannot keep up with the pace of innovation. Therefore, it is very important to occupy a spot on arXiv first.

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

Sometimes it is measured in centuries.

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

Websites like arXiv, which allow publications without review, are undoubtedly the places with the most amateur scientists.

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

however……

“But the co-authors of this paper are Grigory Perelman and a Chinese named Chang Haonan.”

Arash's answer almost made Wiles, who had been sitting still, jump up.

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

Arash nodded:

"I specifically clicked in to check it out, and I'm very sure."

While speaking, he had already taken out his laptop.

But before he could press the power button, Wiles took it away.

There is no trace of the calmness that "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 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 ruined.

So he said only two words and then shut up.

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

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

"It's really Perelman..."

In fact, when I read the first page of this article, most of my doubts about folk scientists were dispelled.

after all……

Wiles had never seen a civilian scientist who could write the paper format so clearly...

"This Chang Haonan, 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..."

Kong Cevic, who was standing next to him, suddenly said:

"In the December issue of Annals of Mathematics, he published a paper proving two long-standing lemmas in differential geometry."

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

"It's him?"

Wiles still remembers talking about that issue of Annals of Mathematics with a colleague who studied topology.

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

but……

Isn't this pushing too fast?

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

I thought I had left myself enough wiggle room.

Turns out great guys.

It would be interesting if the proof in this paper is confirmed.

The seven great math problems of the millennium.

It won’t take a month.

It wasn't even an hour.

The person who asked the question is still standing on the stage.

It will become the top six...