Chapter 179 The letter left by Professor Mirzakhani
In mathematics, or in most of science, it is still a fact that most of the top prize winners are almost exclusively men.
However, mathematics is more rigorous in this aspect than other fields.
Several major awards in mathematics, including Fields Medal, Albert Medal, Wolf Medal, Crafford Medal, Shaw Medal in Mathematical Sciences, Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics...etc., the world's top awards, the only one won by a woman
It's the Fields Medal.
Several other awards, so far, have not been awarded to women.
This may be related to the fact that the mathematics community is particularly keen on "meritocracy" and hopes to avoid the "stigma" associated with measures such as quotas.
Of course, it's not just math.
Many prestigious scientific awards also face this problem.
Some awards organizers are trying to increase the diversity of nominators and decision-making committees. But that can be difficult to change in a group that tends toward consensus and is not accustomed to rapid change.
Especially in the field of mathematics, progress has been frustratingly slow.
Professor Maryam Mirzakhani from Yinlang is the only woman to win the Fields Medal so far.
Three years ago, in 2014, she won the Fields Medal that year for her contribution to the study of surface symmetry. This broke the embarrassing situation of no women receiving the Fields Medal.
But today, this top female mathematician passed away forever due to breast cancer.
Hearing the news, Xu Chuan was stunned for a moment.
A Fields Medal winner passed away, and he was the only female winner. Why was there no impression in his mind?
But then, he reacted, shook his head slightly and sighed.
He entered the wrong year. It is now 2017. If he had not been reborn, he would still be a sophomore at Nanjing University.
At that time, he had no contact with mathematics at all. When major events happened in the mathematics world, no one in the physics department discussed them at all.
By the time he went to Princeton to study with Witten and began to get in-depth contact with mathematics, Professor Maryam Mirzakhani had been dead for several years, and no one even mentioned it.
But speaking of it, Professor Mariam Mirzakhani still has a little 'relationship' with him.
At that time, he had just entered Princeton, and there was a girl named Pasia Miris, who seemed to be studying under Professor Maryam Mirzakhani.
At that time, she also recruited him for her former mentor and wanted to invite him to study at Stanford University, but he refused outright.
"This is really hopeless."
Xu Chuan shook his head and sighed slightly in his heart.
If he had any memory of this matter, he would have thought of it when he was first recruited.
Then he would definitely vaguely mention this to Professor Mirzakhani and ask Professor Maryam Mirzakhani to check his body.
Although there is no guarantee of 100% cure for breast cancer, the current clinical cure rate is still very high. If patients are diagnosed and treated early, they can achieve better treatment results.
What a shame for such a talented mathematician.
It would have been nice if he had entered the world of mathematics earlier in his previous life. If he had known the cause and news of Professor Mirzakhani's death earlier, he might have been able to save a great mathematician in this life.
However, this incident also reminded Xu Chuan, who tried hard to recall whether any relatives or friends in his memory would suffer from diseases in the future.
This thought really reminded him of another thing.
In his previous life, when he was in his thirties, he received a call from his parents, saying that his uncle seemed to have died of lung cancer and asked if he could come back.
But at that time, he was already trapped in the United States and could not get home at all.
Apart from this, he has never heard of other things in this regard.
"It's probably not too late."
Xu Chuan thought and let go of his worries a little: "From now on, let parents, relatives and friends go for physical examinations every year. Spending a little money is nothing. Ensuring good health is the most important thing."
.......
The death of Professor Maryam Mirzakhani is a big event for the mathematics community.
After all, she was the first female Fields Medal winner in history. Her death was a heavy mourning for the mathematics community.
Xu Chuan attended her funeral with his mentor Professor Deligne and expressed his respect.
Professor Mirzakhani, who was buried in an ice coffin, had short black hair. Except for his face, which looked slightly pale, he looked as if he was asleep.
After walking around the ice coffin, Xu Chuan stepped back, looked at the blue sky in the distance, and sighed in his heart.
A forty-year-old Fields Medal winner, although she has passed the golden age of her academic career, is only halfway through her life, and there is still a long way to go before she can shine.
But now, less than one square meter will seal everything she has.
This reminded Xu Chuan of his previous life, which was almost the same age and had the same future, but fortunately, he could do it again.
...
After seeing off Professor Mirzakhani, when Xu Chuan was about to leave, a young girl found him.
"Are you Mr. Xu Chuan?"
"It's me, who are you?"
Xu Chuan nodded and looked at the girl who stopped him with some confusion.
"Hello, Mr. Xu Chuan, my name is Mesfield Gwen, and I am a student of Professor Maryam Mirzakhani."
Like Professor Mirzakhani, a girl with short hair and some heroic looks stretched out her hand towards Xu Chuan.
"Hello, Miss Gwen, please forgive me." Xu Chuan stretched out his hand and shook it lightly, then said: "Can you please see me for anything?"
"Thank you very much for attending the teacher's funeral. Here is a letter that the teacher asked me to give to you." Mesfield Gwen handed over a letter that was not very thick and handed it to Xu Chuan.
Xu Chuan was very surprised, looked at Masefield Gwen and asked doubtfully: "Are you sure it's for me?"
This chapter is not over, please click on the next page to continue reading! Macefield Gwen nodded and said: "If there is not another person named Xu Chuan who proves Weyl-berry's conjecture, it would be you.
"
Xu Chuan held the letter and was a little confused for a moment.
He had no recollection of his relationship with Professor Maryam Mirzakhani.
The two had only met once, during an exchange meeting in Princeton, and had not even exchanged a few words. Why did Professor Mirzakhani leave a letter to him?
But this was not the time to study this. After confirming that the other party had not given it to the wrong person, Xu Chuan held the letter in his hand and thanked: "Sorry for bothering you."
"This is my duty. I'm leaving first. The teacher is leaving. I still have many things to deal with." Mesfield Gwen bent down slightly, then turned and left.
As for Xu Chuan, he returned to the hotel with letters and doubts.
Curiously, I opened the letter and found two documents inside.
The most superficial one was a letter, written on standard letter paper. There were only two thin sheets. Xu Chuan took a cursory glance at the lower stack. It seemed to be manuscript paper?
Xu Chuan's eyes returned to Xinyi and he looked at it.
"Hello, Xu."
"I'm glad that you can receive this letter, but I should be no longer alive when you see this letter."
"I regretted not seeing your report at last year's Princeton exchange meeting, but I benefited a lot after watching the video of your report."
"The proof of the weakened form of the Weyl-berry conjecture and your report on the Weyl-berry conjecture on the Princeton stage were excellent..."
"..., to make a long story short, the reason why I leave you this letter is that in your papers and reports, I saw some brand-new methods and knowledge, and recorded them, and
I have sorted out some of them and included them in the letter I sent to you. I hope they can bring you some help."
"Unfortunately, when I was doing this sorting, I was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer, and I didn't have much time left, otherwise I could have made it more perfect."
"I heard that you later extended the xu-weyl-berry theorem to the field of astronomy. Unfortunately, I am undergoing chemotherapy and don't have much energy to read those papers."
"But I believe..."
"...."
"Forget it, let's stop talking here. If I continue nagging, I'm afraid I will really become an old woman. I hope you don't mind. I hope those things on the manuscript paper can bring you some help."
【Maryam Mirzakhani.】
After reading the letter left to him by Professor Maryam Mirzakhani, Xu Chuan sat there without moving for a long time.
After a long time passed, he finally raised his head and let out a long breath of turbid air in his chest.
It's too late to say anything now. I just hope that he can gain enough knowledge from the manuscript paper left by Professor Mirzakhani to fulfill her last wish and hope.
After carefully folding the letter, Xu Chuan picked up the manuscript paper and read it carefully.
The manuscripts left behind by a Fields Medal winner before her death contain unfinished work during her lifetime, which deserves to be treated with caution by anyone.
Starting from the first page, Xu Chuan sat in the hotel room for more than five hours, and it was not until late at night that he finished reading the dozens of pages of the manuscript.
After getting up and moving his body, he breathed a sigh of relief and sat down again.
These manuscript papers are worthy of being left behind by a Fields Medal winner.
The knowledge inside spans from Teichmuller theory and hyperbolic geometry to the popularity of ergodic theory and symplectic geometry, to the topological nontriviality of counting functions and berry phases, and the study of berry curvature... spans
Several areas of mathematics.
Moreover, the research in each field of mathematics is quite profound, and it is basically the most cutting-edge knowledge in the current field.
Even if he only read it once in a short period of time, he could not say that he fully understood all the knowledge points.
However, Xu Chuan already had a good idea of the general situation.
The route taken by Professor Mirzakhani is somewhat similar to the mathematics he had previously discussed with Professor Artur Avila.
Using domain expansion, the function is converted into a subgroup and connected to the intermediate domain and collection, and then generalized.
However, what he and Professor Artur Avila were talking about were some issues that pushed it to the Langlands Programme, such as some conjectures derived from the automorphic l function.
Professor Mirzakhani pushed it towards the cohomology class of algebraic closed chains, and tried to use this method to penetrate into algebraic geometry.
This may be related to Professor Mirzakhani's previous research field. After all, her research field during her lifetime was in algebraic geometry.
I have to say, this is a pretty clever idea.
The only female Fields Medal winner in history, her mathematical insights and inspirations are richer than the world knows.
"Such a mathematical genius...sigh~"
At the desk, Xu Chuan sighed and carefully collected the manuscript papers and documents on the desk.
Then he got up to wash up and go to bed.
He will return to Princeton tomorrow and will study these things carefully.
...
After paying homage and seeing him off, Xu Chuan followed Deligne back to Princeton.
But after he came back, he asked Professor Deligne for a week's leave, not to go out and play, but to concentrate on sorting out the manuscript papers left for him by Professor Mirzakhani.
After all, although the knowledge there is rich, it is all Professor Mirzakhani's essays and manuscripts, some ideas, and some unfinished things.
He needs to sort out these things systematically and then conduct in-depth research on them.
Professor Deligne had no objection to his request for leave, nor did he ask him what he was going to do on leave.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Even if you ask for leave to play, he will agree.
If Princeton didn't have the habit of tutors taking the initiative to give students vacations, Deligne would have wanted to give Xu Chuan a vacation.
Not to mention the study in the second half of the past year, which was delayed for several months, but in the first half of this year alone, from February to May, he really saw the madness of this student.
Twenty-four hours a day, more than fourteen hours of which were spent studying. He and Edward Witten combined could barely have enough energy to satisfy him.
Deligne wondered strangely, if he continued like this, wouldn't he have anything to teach him in another year and a half?
There is no way, this student's understanding and absorption of knowledge is too fast.
Moreover, the diligence makes people want to cry.
Deligne thought that he had been diligent enough in his studies when he was young, but in comparison, his diligence was nothing.
I don’t attend parties, I don’t travel, I’m not interested in electronics, internet, and entertainment... In addition to eating and sleeping every day, I only have to study.
A bit like a robot built specifically for learning.
Such people are supposed to be eccentrics and extremely difficult to deal with. For example, Grigory Perelman, who proved Poincare's conjecture, is such a eccentric.
He refused almost all social interactions and awards. He studied mathematics like an ascetic, and even the Fields Medal could not attract him from the mountains and forests.
It can be said that the two people's personalities are almost exactly the same. Apart from being interested in learning, they are not very interested in other things.
But compared to Perelman, his student's human sophistication is not weak. At least, within the normal scope of an ordinary person.
For example, after he returns to China, he will bring some specialties and gifts to him and Witten. He will also participate in various awards, receive and express his own opinions and remarks. If there is a need for him to hold a report meeting, he will not do so as long as the reason is legitimate.
Rejection. This is the complete opposite of Perelman.
