noveltune Chapter 115 The Retired Grandpa Next Door
Chapter 115 The Retired Grandpa Next Door
[International Center for Mathematical Research, Third Floor Conference Room]
This conference room, which usually only hosts academicians and other top experts, welcomed an ordinary-looking young man today.
Su Hao received a call from the research center early in the morning.
The other party's words were extremely polite, even with a hint of cautious respect, saying that he had some academic questions he wanted to ask in person and asked him to make sure to come over when he had time.
"Could something have gone wrong with the verification part of the proof logic in the paper on the Four Color Theorem?"
Su Hao was feeling uneasy. He hadn't even settled into the large leather chair in the conference room when the door was pushed open.
Then Ilya Cronin, a titan of mathematics in the world today, came in with his back to the door and his rear end sticking out!
Moreover, this legendary mathematician, whose every stomp could shake the mathematics world, was holding two large, steaming mugs with cartoon designs on them, creating an extremely incongruous scene.
thump.
Cronin placed one of the mugs in front of Su Hao.
"You don't mind drinking hot cocoa, do you? I made it myself," Cronin asked with a smile.
"No, no objection!"
These are academic giants who only exist in top-tier academic journals and can usually only be admired from their cited references;
When someone stands right in front of you, alive and well, with a hint of obsequiousness, even offering you a cup of hot cocoa...
Even Su Hao, who is usually as calm as an old dog, couldn't help but feel that the scene was too surreal, and he was somewhat flattered and flustered.
According to rumors in academic circles, this Cronin was eccentric and tyrannical, with academic demands that were almost abnormal, to the point that he could even verbally abuse students to the point of severe depression and expulsion!
But at this moment, he was all smiles and gentleness, like a retired old man next door.
They didn't talk about academics; they asked all sorts of trivial, unrelated everyday questions!
"Su, what kind of classes do you usually have at school?"
"Do you like the food in the cafeteria?"
"What textbooks did you use for your early childhood education? Did you memorize the multiplication tables by the age of one?"
"Have you made any good friends at school? Have any girls written you love letters?"
The two of them, holding their hot cocoas, stared at each other as they walked around in a big circle.
Finally, Su Hao couldn't hold back any longer. His mind was full of the paper verification, so he took the initiative to get to the point.
"Um...Professor Cronin, didn't I say in the phone call earlier:
Should I ask you in person about any doubts I have regarding my proof process? Did I make a mistake in one of my steps?
Upon hearing this, Cronin was stunned for a moment, then suddenly burst into an extremely hearty laugh.
"Ha ha ha ha!"
Faced with this sudden burst of laughter, Su Hao was momentarily at a loss for what to do.
He sat there awkwardly, completely unsure of what expression to wear to deal with this crazy old man.
After laughing enough, Cronin put down his mug.
"Su Hao, your proof process is simply a work of art! Flawless!"
You know this in your heart, and I understand it in my heart too.
In that case, why should we, two intelligent people, waste our precious time on such meaningless verification?
"Huh?" Su Hao was a little stunned by this blatant flattery.
"Those tedious and boring peer reviews and mechanical calculations are naturally taken care of by the group of researchers and doctoral students with excess energy. That's their job."
I specifically called you over today for no other reason than this.
"It's purely because I, as an old man, want to see this promising new star who is about to revolutionize the entire mathematics world!"
At this point, Cronin stopped smiling, looked at Su Hao seriously, and his eyes flashed with an unusual light.
"However, I have to admit, you really surprised me."
I can tell that you must have studied my paper from back then carefully in private.
You were incredibly brilliant to think of using Fourier transform to suppress the oscillations of the Riemann zeta function on the critical line, and then applying it across boundaries to the coloring problem in graph theory!
Upon hearing this knowledgeable remark, Su Hao's eyes widened suddenly, his awkwardness vanished instantly, replaced by pure academic fervor!
"Yes! That's right! That's the one!"
I was stuck for a very long time when dealing with the trailing terms that kept diverging in the extreme range, and no matter how I calculated it, it was a dead end!
However, after I directly applied the transformation equation you proposed, holy crap, it was amazing!
Those redundant distractions were instantly filtered out, leaving everything incredibly clean and refreshing!
That's an absolutely brilliant idea!
When the topic of mathematics comes up, Su Hao's eyes light up like a child seeing a beloved toy, and he even excitedly gestures in the air to demonstrate the evolution of famous formulas.
Listening to Su Hao's heartfelt praise, Cronin's lips curled up uncontrollably, and even his mustache trembled with pride.
"Haha, great minds think alike, right?"
It is important to know that during Su Hao's process of proving the Four Color Theorem;
He drew upon a wide range of sources, citing numerous academic theories, among which the "oscillation suppression transformation" proposed by Cronin many years ago played a decisive and core role!
This gave Cronin a sense of kindred spirits across time.
The two math geeks, one big and one small, chatted animatedly for a long time in the conference room.
Cronin shared in great detail, without reservation, his mental journey of painstakingly deriving the theory in the attic during countless sleepless nights.
When he got excited, he even had a bit of a "playful old man showing off his toys" vibe, revealing several top-secret cutting-edge research projects that he was leading a team to tackle recently.
This was absolutely a thrilling and intellectually stimulating exchange!
Without exaggeration, this was the first time in Su Hao's life that he had encountered someone in the real world who could resonate with him so deeply in terms of thought frequency and logical depth, and who could understand his meaning instantly without explanation!
After chatting until his throat was dry, Cronin took a swig of cold cocoa and stared intently at Su Hao.
"So, what are your plans next?"
In fact, Cronin had a heavy weight on his mind.
He was secretly terribly worried that this prodigy who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere might end up like Grigory Perelman, who solved the Poincaré conjecture...
After solving a century-old mathematical problem and winning a top prize, he refused the award because he was disgusted by the utilitarian disputes in academia. He chose to completely withdraw from academia and live a low-key life in the city, far away from worldly fame and fortune.
If that were the case, it would be an immeasurable loss to the entire mathematics community!
That's why he went to great lengths to arrange this meeting today, wanting to personally test the waters.
But now it seems that he was just worrying unnecessarily.
He could see it clearly through Su Hao's clear and bright eyes.
That was the face of a mathematician, thirsting for knowledge and eager to dive into the next unknown field and conquer it!
Su Hao scratched his head and said very modestly:
"My current knowledge base is far from sufficient."
To blindly attempt to solve millennium-level problems would be far too arrogant and ignorant of one's own limitations.
However, these self-deprecating words, when they fell into the ears of Cronin, who understood the brain circuits of geniuses extremely well, were automatically translated by his brain into another layer of extreme arrogance:
"Give me enough time to sharpen my blade, and I can crush those so-called millennial problems into dust!"