A genius? I just love studying.

Chapter 158 Don't disturb his studies

University of California, Berkeley

Franklin Lee returned to his office after finishing his class and immediately opened arXiv to check the latest papers in his field of interest. As a mathematician in his prime, he was now full of curiosity and ambition to make a difference; he was thirsty for knowledge.

As you can tell from his name, he is Chinese. After studying abroad on a government scholarship, he went from master's to doctoral, then to postdoctoral, lecturer, and associate professor. It took him twenty years. He had long been used to life in the United States, so he stayed here, married a local native, and started a family.

He changed his name to conform to local customs, but unfortunately, he is still a Chinese citizen. It's not that he is particularly patriotic, but rather that the Ascension Token is not so easy to obtain.

Therefore, he was eager to achieve something, remove the "Deputy" from his title of professor, obtain the Ascension Token, and stay in the United States.

Applications of the Langlands Program in Condensed Matter Physics...

Hmm, kind of interesting.

He recently received news that a Chinese mathematician has proven the Langlands conjecture in geometry and published a paper. If the paper passes review, the grand ceremony more than a year from now will likely be his stage to shine.

For mathematicians, it is common practice to directly use certain conjectures that are likely to be true. They first assume that the conjecture is true, and then use it to make a series of proofs. For example, in the 20s, Hardy and Littlewood assumed that the generalized Riemann conjecture was true, and then proved the weak Goldbach conjecture.

Therefore, long before the Langlands conjecture was proven, many mathematicians had already begun to use some of its conclusions for applications. However, its application in condensed matter physics is still a relatively new topic, and its emergence is quite timely.

He had originally had this idea, but he didn't expect someone else to beat him to it, which made him feel a little regretful.

After clicking in and reading it carefully, Franklin nodded to himself. Without a doubt, it was an excellent paper. After reading it, he temporarily gave up the idea of ​​researching in this direction.

After searching online for information about the author of the paper, Franklin was even more amazed.

The author of this paper is actually a 21-year-old master's student!
That's how it is with mathematics; a young novice might produce more in a year than an old mathematician does in a lifetime.

He had no choice but to admit defeat.

After quickly going through arXiv, he went to the websites of several journals he usually followed and began looking for papers that interested him and were in the same field.

Soon, he came across another interesting paper in the Duke Mathematics Journal—the application of the Langlands program to fractional Chern class differential geometry.

Indeed, there are quite a few discerning people in this world.

Franklin clicked on it without hesitation.

However, the more he read, the more he felt something was wrong.

Why does this paper look so similar to the one he just read?
Although the titles of the two papers seem to be very different, the content of the research is the differential geometric implementation of fractional Chern classes. Although there are some minor differences, the main ideas are almost identical.

It's quite obvious; one of the papers was plagiarized!

Looking at the dates again, the previous paper had been published on arXiv more than a month ago and in Mathematical Physics Communications two weeks ago, while this paper appeared in the latest issue of Duke Journal of Mathematics.

The chronological order seems to have already explained a lot.

Upon seeing the author of the next paper, Franklin had no further doubts.

If you're Chinese, then it's understandable.

The two papers were published in very short intervals, which may explain why the latter paper was written in such a hasty manner and left such obvious traces of plagiarism.

I don't know what's wrong with Duke Mathematics Journal, that it would publish a paper like this.

He immediately contacted the editorial office of Duke Mathematics to explain the situation, and then contacted Oliver, the author of the plagiarized paper, through the paper's mailing address to inform him of the matter.

Still not satisfied with what he had done, he opened Twitter, then logged out and logged into Facebook. Twitter limits the length of posts to 280 characters per tweet, which obviously couldn't satisfy his rage.

Facebook, however, does not have this restriction.

With his hands flying across the keyboard, Franklin displayed the skill of a scholar writing expert, and soon a vivid and engaging article took shape—"A Brief Discussion on the Academic Atmosphere in China—Starting with a Plagiarized Paper."

He began by discussing the overall academic environment in China, from basic science to applied research, and finally focused on the serious problem of academic slacking and the prevalence of low-quality papers. He concluded that this is why China has failed to produce great scientists like Einstein and Newton, and why such a large country has not even produced a single Fields Medal winner.

Franklin himself was a somewhat famous mathematician, and this article gained some popularity as soon as it was published. Eventually, it was seen by some Chinese students studying in the United States, who resonated with it strongly and shared it wildly, making it quite popular in a small circle for a time.

This article undoubtedly garnered them a high degree of recognition and proved that their decision to study abroad was a very wise one.

Of course, some international students didn't like this article. They felt that what some people did as individuals didn't need to be generalized to the collective, and that individual couldn't represent the collective.

China may have many bad aspects, but it also has many good ones.

Unfortunately, their voices were quickly buried in the comments section.

At Duke University, Bryant and Oliver sat in their office, staring at their computer screens, their faces grim.

They had just received an invitation from a research group at Berkeley and were feeling happy when they unexpectedly came across this blog post and Franklin's email to Oliver.

"Bryant, did you offend this guy before?"

Oliver looked at his teacher suspiciously. This move by the teacher was undoubtedly putting him in a very difficult position. If the heat was too great, the truth would eventually come out, and he would be ruined.

"Who knows where this guy came from? I've never even heard of him!"

Bryant was also furious.

Letting this matter pass quietly would undoubtedly be in their best interest. Unexpectedly, this guy not only sent an email to Oliver, but also complained on Facebook, to the point that a teacher directly tagged him on Facebook. It looks like this matter is about to become a hot topic in the industry.

"I see. He's a professor at Berkeley. Maybe if we join the research group, we'll just take his place!"

Oliver said with a sudden realization.

Bryant nodded in agreement; this was undoubtedly the most reasonable explanation, otherwise he couldn't understand why this guy would do such a thing.

“It’s okay, I know a Facebook executive who can spend some money to put this matter to rest.”

Bryant once again demonstrated his extraordinary ability to connect with people.

"As long as we produce results next,"

"If this project is successful, our names will appear in math books and go down in history, and this matter will be insignificant."

Bryant envisioned it.

……

In the editorial department of the Shanghai branch of the "Blue City Daily," Jia Ning quickly browsed various media outlets, searching for potential trending topics.

In today's internet age, journalists who go offline to search for trending topics are no longer willing to do it. It's hard work, tiring, and doesn't yield any valuable news, so it's really unnecessary.

On the contrary, things like this are easy to do. Just find something online, set a theme, and process it a bit to get traffic. Anyway, that's the style of their company. A newspaper has Putian Group ads on the left and the Virginia incident report on the right. It's hard to find such a realistic and magical scene outside of their Blue Square City Daily.

Jia Ning is very good at this kind of work and fits the company's style well.

Most of his colleagues go to places like Weibo to find trending topics, but Jia Ning is different; he has unique sources of information.

He quietly set up a VPN and first browsed through X for a while, but unfortunately he didn't find any exciting news that Chinese people would be interested in. He then opened another webpage and went to Facebook.

Soon, a tweet from the system caught his attention.

"A Brief Discussion on the Academic Atmosphere in China - Starting with a Plagiarized Paper" Like a fish smelling fishy odor, Jia Ning immediately became excited.

This article originally had a certain level of popularity, but for some reason it suddenly lost its traffic. If he hadn't happened to be following this professor, he wouldn't have seen the article either.

However, popularity on foreign websites is not his only criterion for judging the value of news; he has his own logic for judgment.

……

At Jiangcheng University, Xiao Meng has been riding high these past few days, walking with a swagger. But nothing stays secret forever; the news that she secured two million yuan in research funding and has another fifty million yuan in funding applications in progress has already spread within a small circle of the Physics Department.

The research direction was not a secret, and many people speculated that she must have made a breakthrough, but no one knew the specifics.

Passing by the cherry blossom avenue, Xiao Meng seemed lost in thought. Originally intending to walk straight by, she turned around and climbed up the stairs next to it, all the way to the top of the cherry blossom avenue, heading towards the School of Mathematics, and arriving outside Yuan Xinyi's office.

"Teacher Xiao?"

Before he even reached the office door, Yuan Xinyi, who had just returned from the restroom, greeted him first, "Are you here to see someone?"

"That's right!"

Xiao Meng nodded affirmatively, "I came here specifically to see Teacher Yuan."

"No, I came to thank Teacher Yuan!"

"Oh? The research project has made progress?"

Yuan Xinyi could probably guess what was going on.

This was somewhat unexpected. Chen Hui had only been in Xiao Meng's research group for less than ten days, and he hadn't expected that Chen Hui would solve Xiao Meng's problem so quickly. He had underestimated that little guy.

"This is more than just progress; it's a major breakthrough!"

Xiao Meng smiled smugly and said, "I envy Teacher Yuan for having such a good student!"

"This time it's at least two more SCI papers in Q1."

Two SCI papers in Q1 journals!

"congratulations!"

Yuan Xinyi said with a smile that for someone of his level, a first-tier SCI journal was just icing on the cake, and he didn't really value it.

"I should be congratulating you," Xiao Meng said, guessing that Yuan Xinyi had misunderstood. "These two SCI papers belong to your students, not our research group!"

"what?"

Yuan Xinyi's pupils contracted slightly.

Good guy!
Two SCI papers in Q1 journals in just ten days. He wasn't this good back then. He can't even imagine what amazing things that kid could have accomplished if he had been given more time.

"Xinyi, something's happened."

Just then, Xu Zhiyuan rushed into the office. His voice preceded his arrival. Once inside, he realized that Xiao Meng was also there, so he swallowed back what he was about to say.

Xiao Meng has a good eye for detail. "Then I won't bother Professor Yuan any longer. Thank you again, Professor Yuan. We can collaborate more on future projects."

However, before she could take a step, another figure rushed in.

"Why did you come here?"

Guo Senlin rushed into the office, panting, and said to Xiao Meng that the terrain of Jiangcheng University was really difficult for an old man like him.

After catching his breath, he spoke again, "It's good that Professor Yuan is here too. You should quickly tell your student not to publish his two papers yet, and Professor Xiao, your patent should also wait."

"why?"

Xiao Meng was puzzled.

"This involves national strategy, so please don't ask any more questions. Staff will come to you later to sign a confidentiality agreement."

Guo Senlin waved his hand and said with a smile, "This is a good thing. You should believe that the country will not treat you unfairly."

"???"

Xu Zhiyuan was full of questions. He wondered if he should go out.
Although he was just a mathematics scholar, he still had this political sensitivity; there were some things that were better left unknown.

Xiao Meng immediately understood what Guo Senlin meant and said to Yuan Xinyi, "Teacher Yuan, would you please ask Chen Hui to come over?"

Yuan Xinyi was also a little confused. He only had a general idea of ​​Xiao Meng's research topic and did not have an in-depth understanding of it. So, what kind of breakthrough was it that had even alarmed the higher-ups?

"Chen Hui?"

"Is it related to Chen Hui?"

Xu Zhiyuan was a little confused. What were these two papers? What was going on?

He just returned from the IMO with Chen Hui two days ago, how come he has two more papers?
"That's exactly what I was looking for, Chen Hui."

With too many doubts, he simply ignored them all. Since Xiao Meng and Dean Guo were also looking for Chen Hui, there was no need to hide this matter, and it seemed impossible to hide it anyway, as it had already spread all over the internet.

As he spoke, he took out his phone, opened Weibo, clicked on the ninth trending topic, and then handed the phone to Yuan Xinyi.

A Brief Discussion on the Academic Atmosphere in China—Starting with a Plagiarized Paper, the Chinese People Have Lost Face Internationally…

"Bullshit!"

Yuan Xinyi remained calm after reading it, while Xiao Meng was furious.

She had met Chen Hui and witnessed his abilities. But was it worth plagiarizing a single SCI paper from a single journal?
Does it deserve it?
"Send a green-robed letter to the Blue Party City Daily!"

Xiao Meng was truly furious.

"Professor Xiao, there's no need to get agitated. We have complete meeting minutes and video recordings, so there's nothing to argue about," Yuan Xinyi said calmly and confidently.

"Don't worry, Professor Yuan. No matter what, our Physics Department will stand up for you. We all believe in Chen Hui's academic ethics."

Guo Senlin smiled broadly, "Blue City Daily, huh? You won't be able to keep this up for long."

Although it's just a comment on a reprinted article, shouldn't verifying the truth be the job of journalists?

In the past, Jiangcheng University might have had a hard time handling this matter, but now that Chen Hui is a core scientist at the National Strategic Laboratory, this matter will naturally be handled by the Iron Fist.

“Our school will handle this kind of thing, so there’s no need for Chen Hui to make a special trip. Don’t disturb his studies.”

Guo Senlin waved his hand and made the decision.

Xu Zhiyuan was the only one who was confused when he was taken to sign a confidentiality agreement. He had only come to deliver a message, so how did he end up joining a national key laboratory?

(End of this chapter)