Chapter 836 The seven major problems have become six? (10,000 per day)
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.
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 even have 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 person 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.”
“You know, the strength of the institute is limited, and it is impossible to spend all its energy on dealing with letters from folk mathematics enthusiasts.”
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 Gechai 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 short pause, Jeff continued:
“Second, the award will be officially awarded at least one year after the results are published.”
In contrast, this one elicited little response—
Solving problems at the level of the Seven Problems is often accompanied by the emergence of a new theoretical framework, resulting in papers that must be extremely long and extremely 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 person 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 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 There has still been tremendous development. In short, compared to the final ownership of the US$7 million, 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 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.
As for mathematical things, no one can give an accurate timetable.
Maybe next month, maybe next century.
Who can say for sure?
At this time.
A familiar voice suddenly sounded from behind him:
“Teacher? Teacher!”
Wiles was stunned for a moment, then turned around.
However, he discovered that it was Arash who was "punished" by himself and banned from attending the meeting in the morning.
The latter's face looked a little pale for some reason, as if he had just been seriously ill.
“Arash?”
At this time, Koncevich, who was next to him, also turned around and saw the young man he remembered at a glance yesterday, and couldn't help but joked:
“You may not have come at the right time, and we have already entered the question-asking 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 regular review can't keep up with the rate of innovation of results. Therefore, it is very important to take advantage of arXiv first.
But the productivity of mathematical papers from ideas to papers...
Sometimes it is calculated in terms of centuries.
More importantly, Arthur Jeff on the stage just made a joke about Minke.
And websites like arXiv, which can be published without approval, are undoubtedly the places with the most civil sciences.
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 up.
“Are you sure it's…that Perelman?”
Alash nodded:
“I specifically clicked on it and looked at it, 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 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 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 two words and then closed my mouth.
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 read the first page of this article, most of my doubts about Minke have been dispelled—
after all…
Wiles has never seen a civil science student who can write such a clear paper format...
“This ChangHaonan, how come I seem to have heard of it somewhere...”
He looked at the message from another author and said to himself:
“Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics…”
Koncevich, who was 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:
"It's him?"
Wiles still remembers chatting with a colleague who studied 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 the 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 him a month at the earliest or a century at the earliest to be able to solve any of the seven previous problems.
I thought I had left myself enough room for maneuver.
The results are good guys.
It would be interesting if the proof process in this paper was confirmed.
Seven major mathematical problems of the millennium.
How to use it for one month?
This is not even an hour.
The poster of the question is still standing on the stage.
It will become the Big Six...
(End of this chapter)
Chapter end
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