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Chapter 315 How can you tell the truth so easily?

The turbulence problem is indeed a very difficult one. Of course, none of the problems selected by the Clay Mathematics Institute as one of the seven Millennium Problems are simple.

This made Qiao Yu suspect that the old man deliberately placed the book "Navier-Stokes Equations and Turbulence" in the most conspicuous position to make it easier for him to fall into the trap.

He is so confused!
Fortunately, Qiao Yu forgave himself quickly.

There are many stories about being smart for a lifetime but foolish for a moment in this world, and one more story won't make any difference. No one can always win except the one who lives in the white house.

I went out to meet up with Lao Zheng and returned to the Yanbei International Center for Mathematical Research. When I entered the door, I saw Professor Xue walking out with a student.

After saying hello, Qiao Yu asked casually, "Professor Xue, I have a project that could win a Fields Medal. Are you interested?"

"Academician Qiao, you are still so humorous. I can still look forward to the Wolf Prize next time, but forget about the Fields Medal." Xue Song responded with a wry smile.

There is no way, as we all know, the age limit for winning the Fields Medal is quite strict! Xue Song was already 40 years old two years ago. He has no chance of winning the Fields Medal in this life.

"No, no, no. You can still look forward to it. Besides, there are precedents. If you succeed, you are guaranteed to get a silver medal!" Qiao Yu explained.

"Haha, then I'm even less interested. There are only a few topics that can win the Fields Silver Medal, and two hands are enough to count them. I have no interest in any of them. I'm just an ordinary professor, so don't tease me."

Xue Song simply refused.

Are you kidding me? The problems that won the silver medal are all problems that a normal mathematician would spend a lifetime to solve, but would probably not be able to solve.

Of course, Qiao Yu is not a normal mathematician. Others may not be able to do the projects he can do.

If Qiao Yu was inviting him to help, it might not be a problem. But the silver medal was mentioned at the beginning, which was not the tone of an invitation to help.

You should know that the International Mathematical Union is very cautious when identifying contributors to these major problems. Generally, they will repeatedly confirm who made the results and then award the prize to the one who made the greatest contribution.

Just like when the Russian scholar Perelman solved the Poincare conjecture, there was also a lot of controversy back then.

Many mathematicians simply couldn't understand the proof written by this mathematical genius, so many people began to explain and complete Perelman's paper.

In simple terms, it is to fill in the omitted parts that people cannot understand. Yuan Lao, Tian Yanzhen and some Chinese scholars have done a lot of work in this regard.

This also led to controversy in the academic community at the time about who had completely solved the problem.

But in the end, the International Mathematical Union awarded the prize to Perelman alone.

The reason given is that this solution was first proposed by Lao Pei, especially the concept of "finite time singularity" and "W-entropy formula".

These mathematical innovations are the core of proving the Poincare conjecture. Therefore, the main ideas of the proof were completed independently by Perelman. Therefore, although others also did a lot of work in the end, only Perelman was recognized as the terminator of the problem.

This is actually in line with the development law of mathematics. Innovation in mathematics has always been made by a minority of people.

The life work of most mathematicians is to promote and complete these innovations. Therefore, mathematics is probably one of the subjects that most worships genius.

The evaluation of mathematicians also forms its own system. The ones who have made the greatest contributions are undoubtedly the founders of a certain discipline and the terminators of a certain problem.

At present, Qiao Yu has achieved both. Qiao is the originator of algebraic geometry and the terminator of the Riemann hypothesis.

So to be honest, it is understandable that Lao Xue was dissatisfied with Qiao Yu's initial lack of ambition.

If it were him, having achieved so much at such a young age, he probably wouldn't have the energy to continue doing scientific research.

Old Xue also knew that both the school and the research center had high hopes for Qiao Yu. So as soon as Qiao Yu opened his mouth, he knew that the higher-ups were starting to put pressure on Qiao Yu again.

The best way to deal with it is of course to stay out of it no matter what.

So without giving Qiao Yu any chance to continue persuading him, Xue Song took the initiative to talk about other topics.

"By the way, how is the progress of the manned moon landing? I see there has been no report in the past two days?"

Qiao Yu replied with a dull look, "What good is there to report while we're still on the way? We have to wait until tomorrow afternoon to enter the low-moon orbit we set up earlier and dock with the cargo bay. The official landing will probably have to wait until tomorrow night."

Speaking of this question, Xue Song became interested: "I heard that after the lunar research station is built, it will be directly visible on Earth with ordinary astronomical telescopes. Is that true?"

"Well... that depends on the angular resolution of the general astronomical telescope you are talking about. But Professor Xue, there is no need for us to be so polite. If you just want to know the scale and design of the research station, you can just tell me directly.

The materials brought this time can build a space of about 300 square meters. The initial design has two floors, one underground and one above ground. The underground is mainly the living area, and the ground is the experimental area.

The division of labor is quite reasonable. When scientists go up in the middle of the year, they will bring another batch of materials for expansion. In the future, the research base will be gradually opened to ordinary people.

I have also secured some places for the International Mathematical Union. Mathematicians who have made outstanding contributions to world mathematics, regardless of their country, will have the opportunity to achieve the seven-day trip to the moon first.

All expenses will be paid by the International Mathematical Union. So if you are willing to take over this project, you will have the opportunity to become one of the first mathematicians to land on the moon in the future. What do you think? Are you interested in my proposal now? "

"Well... forget it, Academician Qiao, I'm afraid of heights! Oh, and I still have to take my students to a lecture, so I'll leave first."

After saying that, Xue Song turned his head to glance at the students who were eager to talk to Qiao Yu, and then left without hesitation in the regretful eyes of his students.

In fact, not only the students felt sorry, Qiao Yu also felt sorry.

The professors in the past were more aspirational. They could get excited just by drawing a big picture.

Now even Professor Xue has become lazy and doesn’t even care about the Fields Medal.

At this time, the students that Old Xue accepted after coming to Yanbei also felt it was a great pity and couldn't help asking.

"Boss, Academician Qiao asked you to do such a good project, but you refused without even listening! If you can really win a Fields Silver Medal, that would be really amazing."

Xue Song couldn't help but glare at his beloved disciple and scolded him bluntly, "Naive! If the Fields Silver Medal was really that easy to get, would Wiles be the only one to get it now?

The mathematical topics that can make Academician Qiao push forward are nothing more than the unsolved problems raised by the Millennium Clay Institute. P=NP, NS equation, four-color problem, BSD conjecture and Yang-Mills theory existence and quality gap, which one do you think we are qualified to challenge?
Fields Silver Medal! If I dare to take this project, someone will come to talk to me tomorrow. I might be transferred the day after tomorrow! This is a fight between the gods above, do you want to get involved? "

This is life experience.

Obviously, for a student who has just started, he never thought that a subject could be so complicated. He didn't react for a long time and subconsciously asked, "Fighting? Fighting what?"

"What else can students do to fight teachers? Isn't it that the students don't want to do the tasks assigned by the instructor? I asked you to raise questions during the weekly group meeting. How did you fool me? Qiao Yu just wanted to fool his previous instructor. Do you understand?"

Xue Song sneered.

"Well...actually, I really didn't fool you at the group meeting!" the student said embarrassedly.

That said, he really understood it.

I just didn't expect that even after I reached the status of academician, there are still people forcing me to do projects.

But no matter how you listen to it, it seems like a happy trouble.

After all, most tutors would not place such unrealistic hopes on their students.

Forget the four major problems of the millennium, just any small problem will do. It's like Professor Xue asked him to choose a topic directly in the application direction and not touch the theory.

Finally, he was assigned the direction of data analysis and was asked to do some algorithm optimization towards quantum computing.

At first, he thought his mentor had underestimated him, but now he felt that his mentor knew him too well.

If he had really tried to work on theory, he probably wouldn't have been able to pass the midterm exam, let alone the graduation thesis.

It is really hard to get a PhD in theoretical mathematics in Yanbei now! It is really like working until your head is bald!

Choosing a direction is the big problem.

The most popular theoretical research direction in Yanbei now is Qiao algebraic geometry. Even if you don't choose these directions, you have to lean towards this direction.

After all, if you go out to attend a seminar now, everyone is using this theory to do their research. The instructors are naturally the same.

But I have never come across this before, and it is so damn hard to fully grasp the theory. It is many times more difficult than applying it directly.

This is actually easier to understand for science and engineering majors who are not majoring in mathematics.

If you are doing theoretical research, you need to understand the theory thoroughly and then expand it. But if you are only doing application, it is simple. You can just use the proved theorem directly.

It’s like when you study signals and systems, you only need to know how to do Fourier transform. The formulas are all there, and even if you don’t fully understand them, you can just apply them mechanically.

But if you want to learn it thoroughly, there are more things to think about. For example, why do many signals have imaginary parts after Fourier transform? It is well known that the imaginary part in mathematics often has no physical meaning. So what is the meaning of the imaginary part?
For example, he has been exposed to a lot of linear algebra.

Nowadays, when doing theory, we not only need to have a deep understanding of the eigenvalues ​​and eigenvectors of the matrix, singular value decomposition, and diagonalization of the matrix, but also need to combine it with the modal system in the root Joe algebra.

But if you only want to do applications, you can ignore the above. Just like his predecessors, he only needs to know how to use the Euler method, Runge-Kutta method or other methods to solve the problem.

Yes, for a PhD student in mathematics at Yanbei University, the difference between working on theory and working on applications is huge.

If the difficulty of doing theoretical research when studying for a doctorate at Yanbei University was nine, it has now skyrocketed to twenty. But the difficulty of doing applied research remains at seven.

In the past, ordinary mathematical geniuses who wanted to give it a try could also challenge theoretical research.

But now, in the words of Director Xue, at present at Yanbei University, unless you are a super genius, or if you not only have a great interest but also have a rich family, it is best to work hard on applications. Otherwise, the pressure of graduation will be so great that you cannot bear it at all, and the learning process will make you doubt your life.

He didn't believe it before, but now not only does he believe it, he has even begun to be grateful to his mentor.

After all, his family is really poor and it is impossible for them to support him to delay his graduation, and he may not even get the degree certificate in the end.

I'm not kidding. It is said that the School of Mathematics of Yanbei University and the Yanbei International Center for Mathematics Research have taken the initiative to study how to reduce the difficulty of graduating with a theoretical doctorate.

Otherwise, there are too many doctoral students who have delayed their graduation on both sides, and the pressure on the schools is actually quite great.

Thinking about what my mentor just said, I can only say that Academician Qiao is too cruel! If he doesn't want to touch a certain topic, then whoever takes it will probably die!
On the other side, Qiao Yu was also losing his temper in the office.

"Old Zheng, this is the first time I've heard of someone forcing others to do scientific research! Everyone says I've been slacking off recently. You've been with me the longest, so tell me the truth, have I been slacking off?
I work hard on everything I do! For example, I contributed so much to the space-based defense program and the moon landing program! Massive amounts of data analysis! I have to monitor it every day!

But now I am not popular with anyone! Director Tian and Mr. Yuan think I am just playing around! The manned lunar landing team also thinks they can’t see me every day! Tell me with your conscience, is this fair? "

Zheng Xiwen next to him looked out the window and was too lazy to talk.

Of course he knew how "busy" Qiao Yu was.

It's not an exaggeration to say that there is a lot of data analysis work, but now most of it has been automated. And most of the content is being looked at by Qiao Yu's former students.

It would be a lie to say that Qiao Yu doesn't work, but his work-two-day-off-five-day lifestyle makes the kids in his department drool with envy, and they even begin to misunderstand the profession of scientist.

To think that all scientists’ jobs were that easy!

Fortunately, the intensity of work of other professors at Yanbei University gave them a relatively clear understanding. It can only be said that the life of scientists born in the 2010s is like this. And first of all, they have to struggle...

So at this time Zheng Xiwen really didn't know what to say. After all, Qiao Yu asked him to speak according to his conscience, so he could only remain silent.

"No, Lao Zheng, why don't you say something?" Qiao Yu urged dissatisfiedly.

"Can I speak against my conscience?" Zheng Xiwen asked seriously.

Qiao Yu looked at Zheng Xiwen in surprise and said, "Eh? Old Zheng, when did you learn to be humorous? You don't speak from your conscience? Then what are you going to say? Are you still thinking about telling the truth?!"

(End of this chapter)