From child prodigy to chief scientist

Chapter 118 This is truly a wonderful place

Hua Guo's arrangements were rather conservative. Apart from one day when Fei Ran took everyone to visit nearby attractions, everyone was allowed to rest in their rooms.

Such times were indeed somewhat boring, and since they didn't have anything to watch, even Xu Xiao was starting to get restless.

Left with no other option, Xu Xiao asked Fei Ran if she could take a stroll around the Cultural and Art Palace.

Since this is the location of the exam, and the closing ceremony and awards ceremony will also be held here, the safety situation is relatively guaranteed.

Fei Ran didn't refuse anything, only asking Xu Xiao not to act alone or go to other places.

Pan Hong also wanted to go out for a stroll, so the two of them went to the Merida Palace of Arts and Culture together.

As luck would have it, Xu Xiao ran into Schultz again here.

"Oh, my friend Xu Xiao, we meet again."

"Yes, Schultz, we really do have a lot of connections."

Xu Xiao then gave Schultz a brief introduction to Pan Hong. Schultz was also somewhat surprised to learn that Pan Hong was only fifteen years old.

"Your Chinese team is really young, unlike ours, where most of them are already seventeen or eighteen years old."

"Pan Hong and I are quite special. We were the two youngest members of the national training team."

While chatting with Schultz, Xu Xiao recalled his memories of Schultz from his previous life.

To be honest, Schultz wasn't exactly a child prodigy in mathematics; he didn't have any of those amazing experiences like "learning calculus at age 7" or "taking the college entrance exam at age 8."

Despite achieving good results at the IMO, Schultz did not enter university until he was nineteen years old.

Such an experience, even if posted online, would probably not compare to the many hidden talents among netizens.

But after that, Schultz's life seemed to suddenly take a turn, and his resume suddenly became astonishing.

He earned his bachelor's degree in just three semesters.

In the following two semesters, he earned his master's degree. His master's thesis was so outstanding that his supervisor directly recognized that he had reached the level required for doctoral graduation.

Therefore, Schultz was allowed to skip the independent research stage of his doctoral studies and quickly complete his doctoral defense using this master's thesis as the core.

The "perfect embryo space" theory established in this paper was the theoretical prototype that later helped him win the Fields Medal.

Looking at the entire history, it is almost impossible to find anyone else who has been able to obtain bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in such a short period of time.

"Xu Xiao, today's IMO questions were really terrible. I was almost falling asleep while doing them. I think even my hamster could solve some of them."

Hearing Schultz say that, Xu Xiao couldn't help but smile.

"The questions this time were indeed not very difficult; they were significantly easier than the math competition questions in China."

Xu Xiao had previously heard that the IMO was less difficult than the CMO, and now it seems that this is indeed the case.

If it weren't for the team competition results, Xu Xiao would probably have reacted the same way as Schultz.

Seeing Xu Xiao and Schultz chatting so enthusiastically, Pan Hong wanted to join in, but didn't know how to start.

Although her English grades were not bad, she mainly studied test-oriented English and was completely unable to communicate fluently with foreigners.

She could only try her best to listen to their conversation and try to understand as much as possible.

Similar to Xu Xiao and his group, the German team also didn't arrange many group activities. Schulz took the opportunity to stroll around by himself, but he was clearly more familiar with the place. He led Xu Xiao and Pan Hong to the second floor.

"The coffee shop on the second floor is a great place. What would you like to drink? It's on me."

Because Xu Xiao was not yet twelve years old, she was worried that her body would not be able to metabolize caffeine well, so she had to decline Schultz's offer.

Seeing that Xu Xiao hadn't ordered, Pan Hong felt embarrassed to order either, so Schultz had no choice but to order himself a drink.

While Schultz was ordering coffee, Xu Xiao began to observe the surroundings.

Because the entire Cultural and Art Palace had been temporarily booked by the organizers, most of the people in the cafe were members of the participating teams.

Many tables were covered with scratch paper and pens, and the contestants from different countries appeared to be discussing some mathematical problems with each other.

Seeing this scene, Xu Xiao finally understood why Schultz said this was a good place.

It's fair to say that this place is now a pure mathematical discussion base.

No matter where you come from, everyone can simply discuss mathematics without being restricted by anything else.

Xu Xiao thought that if she were a bit older, she could buy a cup of coffee and sit here all day long without getting bored.

At that moment, a Persian team member was explaining how Khayyam had solved the cubic equation using geometric methods.

The two French team members were arguing endlessly about the point count problem of the elliptic curve.

The Soviet team members over there seem to be drawing a projection of a knot on paper.

After learning about the various issues they were researching, Xu Xiao found it quite interesting.

They don't stop at the stage of competitive mathematics, but have gone beyond that scope, simply studying the mathematics they like without any specific goal in mind.

After ordering his coffee, Schultz greeted many people, indicating that he had quite a few acquaintances here.

Afterwards, Schultz specifically introduced Xu Xiao to everyone.

"This is Xu Xiao from China. She's not even twelve years old yet, and this is her first time participating in IMO."

Upon learning Xu Xiao's age, the other team members couldn't help but exclaim in surprise.

"He's not even twelve years old yet—are kids these days all this amazing?"

"Being able to participate in the IMO means you must have already secured a university admission without taking the entrance exam."

"The last person to participate in the IMO at such a young age was probably Terence Tao, right?"

In fact, many of them had noticed Xu Xiao's existence before, but only learned his name today.

After introducing the other team members to Xu Xiao and Pan Hong, Schultz asked, "Everyone, are there any new or interesting math problems today?"

Upon hearing Schulz's words, Antoine, one of the French team members who had just been debating the problem of counting points on elliptic curves, said, "Perfect timing! I have a problem that I haven't been able to solve for a long time, so I'll share it with you all now."

Everyone seemed quite interested upon hearing this and began asking questions out of curiosity.

Antoine then began to explain to everyone the mathematical problem that had been troubling him for a long time.