Top Student at Their Peak-Chapter 139 - 88: The Attention of the Boss

Beijing, within the Beijing International Mathematics Center on the Yanbei University campus, Tian Yanzhen glanced at the time after receiving the email forwarded by Xue Song.

It was already five twenty in the afternoon.

But it was still early. There was still an hour until dinner, and since there was nothing much to do today, Tian Yanzhen conveniently downloaded Qiao Yu’s paper onto the computer and then printed it out.

Tian Yanzhen had always had an impression of Xue Song. After all, he was once a professor at Princeton, and after returning to Huaxia, he served as vice president at Yanbei University, mainly responsible for foreign affairs.

So he has always maintained contacts with many mathematics professors from Princeton, including Xue Song’s mentor Jure Bhalgava.

When Xue Song returned to the country, Jure Bhalgava even talked to Tian Yanzhen about this student.

Xue Song’s mentor’s evaluation of him was not particularly high, but not low either. It was rather average, which was why he left Xue Song a personal number at that time, and one of the reasons why he was willing to listen to Xue Song talk so much just now.

In some sense, there was a small connection between the two. Moreover, considering Jure Bhalgava’s status in the global mathematics community, even an ordinary evaluation is enough to indicate that Xue Song is at least a talent.

However, Tian Yanzhen really didn’t expect the first call Xue Song made to him would be about Qiao Yu.

Just as Xue Song judged, Qiao Yu indeed hadn’t been officially brought into the focus of these top figures’ attention.

Being formidable in competitions indeed represents having a talent in mathematics. But whether one can persist, whether one can develop in an academic direction, is really uncertain.

The great figures have seen too many young geniuses in their lives, selecting a batch every year in the IMO, for instance.

But those who truly achieve something significant in mathematics are extremely few. Like Peter Schultz, a stunning mathematical genius, only one such figure emerged in the West over so many years. And even though he’s already won almost all mathematical awards at a young age, Peter Schultz still hasn’t proven himself on some major problems.

Mathematics in this era has been expanded by numerous intellectually outstanding predecessors from its original small lake into a vast ocean. Any random subfield might require a genius to dedicate their entire life to it, and whether they can advance it a little further depends on luck.

This point can actually be seen from the current global overflow of papers.

Papers are being published more year by year, but to say mathematics has made significant progress compared to the last century? It’s really hard to say.

The Clay Research Institute, to honor the twenty-three problems Hilbert presented at the World Congress of Mathematicians in Paris, also proposed seven millennium problems. Now, twenty-four years have passed since then, and apart from the Poincaré Conjecture being solved by Perelman in 2003, the other problems remain unresolved.

Even the four-color conjecture among the seven, which was computer-assisted proven as early as the last century, still lacks a complete conclusion formed through logical reasoning in the mathematical community today.

This, of course, isn’t because modern people’s IQs are deteriorating. In fact, as technology develops and material wealth significantly increases, the average intelligence of the human group is continuously improving.

The prolonged absence of world-shocking major achievements merely indicates the increasing difficulty in achieving results in mathematical research now. The emergence of various new interdisciplinary fields also significantly disperses the attention of researchers.

Whether someone is truly suitable for theoretical mathematics research can only be roughly discerned during the graduate stage.

But if assuming what Xue Song just said is true.

That would mean Qiao Yu had solved a special cubic Diophantine equation in just ten days without systematically learning number theory, and then completed his first paper in life in just two months, while self-learning paper writing-related knowledge alongside.

This kind of paper even Xue Song couldn’t find a fault with.

Evidently, this has moved beyond the realm of ordinary genius; it is practically a naturally gifted scientific physique, inherently possessing all the qualities required for mathematical research.

There is a joke circulating in the mathematical academic community: a math PhD only needs to knock on the supervisor’s door twice—first to confirm the topic, and second to submit the paper. As for what happens between choosing the topic and completing the paper, what does it concern the supervisor?

Although the joke is somewhat exaggerated, it does actually illustrate the uniqueness of mathematical research to some extent.

Put it this way, solving a mathematics problem, as long as the student has a little talent and the teacher is patient, can possibly allow the student to understand it if explained step by step. But how does one explain a research direction in unknown mathematics to a supervisor?

Number Theory relies entirely on logical reasoning without an experimental process. The experience that a supervisor can share is mostly very abstract, much like the three taps Tathagata Buddha gave to Sun Wukong. It ultimately depends on the student’s self-learning ability and self-insight, especially the latter.

After all, if one can’t grasp the essence of the supervisor’s experience, no amount of teaching is useful.

Graduate students in mathematics, especially those studying number theory, no matter how talented they are, most have changed their research directions at least once before graduation, with many changing it two or three times.

It’s really not that people are not working hard, it’s that without inspiration, they genuinely can’t come up with a paper. It highlights the importance of self-learning and insight in mathematical research.