Chapter 268 The mathematical world is once again stirred up

The Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in Pierre Deligne's office.

At this time, Deligne was leaning on his chair, reading a recently published mathematics paper.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the office door.

"Please come in." Deligne said.

Then the door opened and Enrique Pompieri came in.

Seeing this old friend come in, Deligne stood up with a smile and asked: "Enrique, why do you have time to come to my place?"

Seeing Deligne like this, Pompieri smiled and said, "You don't know?"

Deligne was stunned: "What do you know?"

"It seems you really don't know, so it's just a coincidence that I came here."

Pompieri laughed and then said: "Do you still remember the interview you received after the last International Congress of Mathematicians?"

"After the International Congress of Mathematicians? Interview?" Deligne was stunned. This happened three years ago. For an old man like him, it is still difficult to think back on it. Moreover, he has accepted quite a lot of interviews.

A top mathematician like him in the world receives invitations for interviews or lectures basically every day, so he doesn't remember those interviews very clearly.

Of course, Deligne still had an impression of the interview after the last International Congress of Mathematicians. After all, that interview was about Lin Xiao.

That conference brought together many of the world's top mathematics masters, and many well-known figures in the mathematics community received invitations from the International Mathematical Union to give reports at the conference. The smartest game in the world was played there.

However, no matter what, among hundreds of lectures, only that young man's lecture is still fresh in people's memory. The determination of the distribution of Mersenne prime numbers and the proposal of Lin's conjecture made that lecture worthy of being listed as an International Congress of Mathematicians.

One of the most important reports in history.

After all, not many mathematicians go to the International Congress of Mathematicians to report such mathematical breakthroughs. Most of them are reports on their past research, or discuss future hot topics.

For example, when Deligne's mentor, Grothendieck, was invited to give a one-hour lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians, he predicted that he would make new breakthroughs in algebraic geometry, and ultimately relied on his foundation for modern algebraic geometry.

work, and then established his reputation as the Emperor of Mathematics.

Of course, I remembered it, but why did Pompierelli mention this?

So Deligne said: "Remember, is there any problem?"

Pompieri smiled: "Do you remember what you said in that interview?"

"We are just talking about things related to Lin Xiao, his Lin's conjecture and so on... Could it be that what you are talking about has something to do with Lin Xiao?" Deligne reacted quickly and asked.

Pompieri laughed and said: "Do you still remember when you talked about Lin's conjecture, how many years did you say it would take to prove it?"

"More than twenty years, um... I should say twenty-five years." Deligne replied, and then he couldn't help but look at Pompieri and asked with a surprised look on his face: "Don't tell me,

Lin’s conjecture has been proven!!”

Seeing Deligne's appearance, Pompieri burst into laughter.

"Bingou! Correct answer!"

Deligne's eyes widened and he suddenly stood up from his seat, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"How come Lin's conjecture was proven so quickly?"

"Impossible, absolutely impossible! Who proved it?"

Seeing Deligne like this, Pompierre laughed even louder. After a while, he stopped because he was almost out of breath.

Deligne looked really depressed and said angrily: "You old guy, I can't stop laughing at you."

Pompieri waved his hand, and after he was calm enough, he said: "It was Lin Xiao, Lin Xiao proved it."

Deligne was stunned for a moment, "Lin Xiao? Really?"

"Of course it's true, he just posted it on arxiv today."

"Oh, that's okay."

Deligne waved his hand, sat back in front of his seat, and then started operating the computer.

If nothing else, of course it is to log in to arxiv.

"This young man finally published another mathematics paper, and it was Lin's conjecture. This means he is willing to return to mathematics."

Pompieri couldn't help but laugh: "Didn't he publish a paper before? That submodular form also brought a surprise to us mathematicians."

"But didn't he go to work on that semiconductor again later?" Deligne shook his head and sighed: "He should be... 22 years old this year, right? If such a genius can continue to study mathematics, what will he do to us?

How useful are the developments in mathematics? As for who in the mathematics community now has the best chance of proving the Riemann Hypothesis, I guess it would be Lin Xiao."

"What a pity, what a pity."

Sighing, he also opened arxiv at this time and found Lin Xiao's paper.

Looking at this title and Lin Xiao's name, it is not difficult to give people a sense of trust in this mathematics paper with a very impressive title just because of Lin Xiao's reputation in the mathematics community.

This is the influence of a top mathematician. Because of various deeds in the past, even when he announces that he has solved a problem, others will believe it even if they have not seen it.

Deligne couldn't help but sigh: "It's really amazing."

Pompieri also walked to the side, looked at the page that Deligne opened after downloading this paper, and said: "It is indeed amazing."

Then he sighed: "But I am worried that if he solved Lin's conjecture, he was actually trying to solve some problem in semiconductors. Do you know where Lin's conjecture is needed to build a lithography machine?"

"How do I know? I don't study this stuff." Deligne replied without paying much attention and continued to read the paper.

When Pompieri saw him like this, he shook his head, said no more, and read the paper beside him. Although he had already read it once, reading it again would help him deepen his understanding.

Although he is quite old, after all, there is no end to learning. When he is old, when he dies, he also hopes to leave this world with the most knowledge in his head.

Of course, it takes a lot of time to read this paper. After all, the whole article only lasts for more than thirty pages. This is because the content is very concise.

In order to rush for time when Lin Xiao was organizing the paper, he did not write every step in detail as before. Instead, he omitted a lot of the content with words such as "obvious", "well-known" and so on.

.

So this is also a challenge for people who read the paper. If you don’t have enough knowledge, you may not be able to understand it.

This can also be regarded as a kind of "bullying" in terms of IQ. After all, if you want to understand a math paper written by a certain boss, you must first be prepared to ask the teacher about all the "obvious" content in it.

Maybe even your own teacher doesn’t understand.

Of course, there are also many cold jokes about these "obvious" things in mathematics. For example: when Andrew Wiles said it was obvious, it would be obvious about two years later - because when he announced that he had proved

When it came to Fermat's last theorem, it actually had to wait two years before he could actually prove it.

Of course, it is easy for Deligne to understand. After all, he is the proud disciple of the founder of modern algebraic geometry. As an important conjecture in algebraic geometry, Lin's conjecture has certainly been studied in depth a lot.

So, as he turned through the pages, until the end, Deligne sighed, "His mathematical ideas and the ability to realize his ideas are still the same as before."

“It’s really a wonderful step to be able to connect the form of a layer to an elliptic curve!”

After reading it again, Pompieri became more aware of the power of Lin Xiao's paper.

He also praised: "Yes! If it were me, I probably wouldn't be able to do this."

"It's topology, algebraic geometry, and it involves cohomology... Oh, it's so amazing. If that old guy Langlands were here, he would definitely jump up excitedly to realize the Langlands program.

One day is approaching again!"

"Yes."

Deligne nodded, unify the mathematical world!

What an exciting thing for mathematicians like them.

Lin Xiao took a more important step towards this end.

Weil's Rosetta Stone also made it a little clearer again.

Deligne said with emotion: "Before the twentieth century, mathematics was still very 'simple', and there were many mathematical geniuses, like Gauss, who could be called omnipotent geniuses in their time."

"However, since the twentieth century, our mathematics has developed better and better, and has become stronger and stronger. Group theory, algebraic geometry, fiber bundles, cohomology theory, modular forms and layers..."

"So many new mathematical theories have made our field of mathematics so complex, and the division of labor has become more and more detailed. Just studying one thing is enough for people to be completely immersed in it. Even what I am studying now is only limited to

In terms of algebraic geometry, there is little research on other theories."

"So I have always believed that many geniuses will emerge in our mathematical community, but there will never be an all-rounder like in the past era."

Geniuses could appear in the past era, and of course geniuses can appear in this era, and you must know that human beings are getting smarter and smarter. In addition, human beings today no longer lack food. They have sufficient nutrition since childhood, so their brains develop when they grow up.

Therefore, the average intelligence of human beings in this era must be higher than that of people more than two hundred years ago. Even if there is not much difference among the most intelligent people, the total population in the twenty-first century is higher than that of people ten years ago.

The population in the ninth century was several times higher.

Therefore, the geniuses of this era, whether in terms of statistics or evolution, actually need more.

"I didn't expect that such a mathematical all-rounder would appear in this century."

Deligne sighed: "If my teacher is still here, he will definitely be very happy."

Pompieri smiled and said, "You probably overlooked one more thing."

"Oh? What's the matter?"

"Lin Xiao is not just an all-rounder in mathematics."
To be continued...