Chapter 226: Two Choices

Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations

As a clear-minded atheist, Lu Zhou did not believe in ghosts.

Once his eyes adjusted to the dark corridor, he finally recognized the person.

“Molina?”

When the French lady heard Lu Zhou called out her name, she smiled and said, “I knew you would come here… Why didn’t you call me? I could’ve picked you up.”

This problem again…

Lu Zhou coughed and changed the subject, “I got my friend to do it… Where is Room 211?”

“Up the corridor, to the left,” said Molina as she pointed with her finger. She then said casually, “Oh yeah, have you chosen a supervisor yet?”

Lu Zhou, “What?”

“I’m saying that if you haven’t chosen one yet, I recommend my supervisor Sophie Morel,” said Molina. She looked at Lu Zhou seriously as she continued, “My previous invitation is still valid, our project needs you.”

Sophie Morel?

Lu Zhou looked at her with surprise.

Molina raised her eyebrows and asked with a smile, “Are you surprised?”

“Yeah…” Lu Zhou nodded.

Sophie was one of the popular candidates for the Fields Medal, a French mathematician.

However what surprised him was not the name Sophie, but it was Princeton’s ability to attract talent.

No wonder Princeton was named the center of mathematics for America…

Lu Zhou suddenly understood why Princeton wanted to steal him from the University of Jin Ling.

It was all for Princeton to win the Fields Medal…

With her arms crossed, Molina smirked and said: “…”

“Thanks for your invitation, but I refuse.”

Lu Zhou walked pass Molina and dragged his suitcase to the end of the corridor.

What a joke.

There’s a 99% chance I can win the medal, why would I choose a supervisor with an 80% chance of winning it? Is she crazy?

…

Lu Zhou originally planned on listening to a few lectures and find a suitable supervisor. It turned out that he underestimated his own value in regards to how “attractive” he was to the professors at Princeton.

He was invited to an academic exchange and coffee party. While he was eating at the exchange, a young female assistant started to talk to him. Soon, she was asking Lu Zhou about his supervisor.

Luo Wenxuan was even worse. He recommended Lu Zhou numerous professors at the start. However, he would not stop bragging about Edward Witten. A Mexican dude nearby said something like, “That trash?”, which resulted in Luo Wenxuan nearly starting a fight.

Lu Zhou knew that he had to do.

To prevent more fighting, he had to make his own decision as soon as possible.

Lu Zhou went to Nassau Hall and got a list of supervisors. He studied the list for an hour before he finally chose Professor Deligne as his first candidate.

The reason was simple.

Algebraic geometry was an important tool for studying number theory and it was also one of Lu Zhou’s shortcomings. Lu Zhou wanted to study Grothendieck’s original manuscripts, but after he got the files from Academician Xiang Huanan, he found out that he could not understand French at all.

Professor Deligne was a stellar student of Grothendieck. There were only two people in history that had won the Fields Prize, Wolf Prize, and Crawford Award. One of them was Qiu Chengtong and the other was Deligne.

Lu Zhou could learn a lot from Professor Deligne.

After the interview, Lu Zhou thought that this serious professor would test him rigorously. He had not expected Professor Deligne to look at his research material and passed the interview on the spot.

Professor Deligne stood up from his desk and took a gray trench coat from the hanger.

“Welcome to Princeton’s big family. I’ll help you sort out the relevant paperwork.”

“My research group mainly focuses on “standard conjectures”. Of course, I have no strict requirements for you. I won’t constrain your development. From my observation, you’re a scholar who is suited for independent research. If you want to join my research project, I’ll welcome you with arms open. If you don’t want to, you can complete a task I give you and finish your own thesis at the same time. You can get your degree either way.”

Deligne paused. He looked at Lu Zhou and continued, “Of course, my expectations for you are higher than other people. Your graduation thesis must be Annual Mathematics level. If all goes well, you could get your PhD next year. If you’re too lax and waste your talent, you may never get your PhD.”

Lu Zhou, “I understand… I’ll think about your suggestions.”

Deligne nodded and said, “Okay… No worries, I understand. Try to get back to me within three days.”

Lu Zhou: “…”

…

The Riemann’s conjecture was different from the twin prime conjecture or Polignac’s conjecture. The conjecture could be summarized in one line: “all non-trivial zeros of the Riemannζ function are located on the complex plane Re ( s) = 1/2”.

However, solving it was a massive project. It was like building a skyscraper.

Just like the Poincaré conjecture, Smer introduced the high-dimensional concept in the 1960s. Without Qiu Chengtong’s theory of “developing geometric structures with nonlinear differential equations”, in which he developed in the proof of the Karaby conjecture, there would be no Hamilton’s breakthrough in the “Ricci Stream”, and the 93-year paper on the singularity theory. There would be no final proof of Perelman.

This was the characteristics of Millennium Prize Problems. Even a genius, like Perelman, could not skip over previous work and directly established the proof of Poincaré conjecture.

Even if Gauss came back alive and had an extra 80 years, he would not be able to solve it.

Riemann’s conjecture was the same as it was even more difficult than Poincaré conjecture.

It was like a mountain, and all of the mathematicians were at the bottom of the mountain. They had no idea how tall the mountain was.

The only thing they knew was that this mountain was nearly impossible to solve. If someone could solve Riemann’s conjecture, even five Fields Medals would not be enough…

If someone skipped all of the unsolved problems and used a new mathematical method to solve Riemann’s conjecture, the situation would likely be the same as the professor from Nigeria, who was not even a mathematician.

This was akin to people that wanted to use rocks and lightning to create a computer. It was completely out of reality. The Clay Institute would collect hundreds of theses a year and all of them were worthless.

Of course, the mathematicians were not completely at lost. Possible ideas were the “40% zero points” of Kangrui’s critical line theorem, or the three mathematicians who recently proposed to introduce the Riemann’s conjecture into a special case of quantum mechanical systems.

There was also algebraic geometry methods.

For example, the Wei’s conjecture that was proved by Deligne (one of the most brilliant achievements in the pure number field in the 1970s), was often referred to as the “cottage version” Riemann’s conjecture.

As for the “standard conjecture” that Professor Deligne said to Lu Zhou, it was the general form of Wei’s conjecture. It was proposed by Grothendieck, the “Pope” of modern algebraic geometry.

If Professor Deligne wanted to fulfill his teacher’s long-cherished wish of proving Riemann’s conjecture, he would have to face the standard conjecture.

When Lu Zhou returned to his dorm and laid in his bed, he started to seriously think about Professor Deligne’s offer.

Right now, he had two choices.

One was to join Professor Deligne’s research project. Although the standard conjecture could increase his mathematics experience, it would delay the progress of his system mission. Especially since he did not know how much work Professor Deligne had done, or had yet to be done.

The other option was to go solo. He could concentrate all of his energy on Goldbach’s conjecture, and use it as his PhD graduation thesis.

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