Chapter 239: Lively Town of Princeton

Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations

It had been a week since Lu Zhou posted on arXiv. Most people who paid attention to Goldbach’s conjecture had heard the news.

As for the fifty-page essay, some people said that the “Group Structure Method” was unbelievable. Some people dismissed the thesis because they could not understand it at all. The proof process was no piece of cake.

Except for those “exceptionally gifted” folks, most people that researched Goldbach’s conjecture knew less than two methods.

For example, those who were proficient in the large sieve method were not proficient in the circle method. Apart from the mainstream choices, there was also the secret rate method and the triangle summation method which was even less popular.

In Lu Zhou’s theory, there were residual signs of the circle method, sieve method, and even group theory. His scope of proof was unusually broad.

As such, most people could not even understand the paper, much less reviewed it.

Of course, the number theory community was quite optimistic. After all, Lu Zhou was a winner of the Cole Prize in Number Theory, and he had solved many number theory problems in the past.

Due to many professors mentioning this matter in class, the discussion spread from the academic circle to online.

It was not just scholars who were discussing this matter, but all university mathematics majors were talking about this thesis.

The discussion began on an online Fields Medal forum.

[Ok! I know that he solved the twin prime conjecture and Polignac’s conjecture, but in class, my professor told us that Goldbach’s conjecture is on a completely different level. It’s like the minor leagues compared to the Super Bowl. To put it bluntly, I don’t think his thesis is correct. There must be a problem somewhere. It will probably be discovered in the near future.]

[Who is your professor?]

[James Maynard! 2014 SASTRA Ramanujan Gold Award winner! 2018 Fields Medal candidate! I think his opinion is quite trustworthy.]

[Oh, Maynard, I’ve heard of him before, the British who studied prime spacing? I heard that after Zhang Yitang calculated 70 million, he’s been challenging the twin prime conjecture. Now Lu Zhou solved the conjecture instead, is he pissed off?]

[Haha!]

[I disagree with you, my professor’s evaluation of this thesis is high. He believes that the Group Structure Method will become a promising analytical tool for analytic number theory.]

[Oh? Who is your professor? To be honest, in the field of number theory, especially prime numbers, not everyone has the ability to understand and review the thesis.]

[Tao Zhexuan.]

[…]

…

There was no peer review on Arxiv, so the correctness of the thesis was yet to be determined. It would be a matter of time before the public would know if this mathematics problem was solved correctly.

However, most people knew that the mathematics community would not take too long to verify this research.

The second week after Lu Zhou uploaded the thesis, the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study announced a message on their website.

Next Monday, Lu Zhou would make a one-hour speech on the Goldbach’s conjecture at Lecture Hall 1 of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.

Since this announcement came out, all of the arguments about the correctness of the thesis turned into the discussion about the report itself.

Many people were still skeptical. Mostly because they could not understand the Group Structure Method, and that Arxiv did not have a peer-review process. However, if there was a report at a prestigious place like the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, many unsolved questions regarding the thesis would be answered.

Due to this, Lu Zhou had been preparing for this speech seriously. He did not want to take this lightly just because the system recognized his work.

The key to a mathematics conjecture being proved was logical self-consistency. It also depended on if it was recognized by peers. As the prover of this conjecture, Lu Zhou had to explain his own theory and answer and to remove all doubts.

Lu Zhou did not care to let go of a single tiny detail as very often, many traps were hidden in “trivial” matters.

Even Wiles was stuck on tiny details when proving Fermat’s last theorem, and this delayed his thesis by an entire year. If it was not for his friends’ encouragement, he would have admitted defeat long ago.

Lu Zhou could not help but think.

He finally realized how useful it was to have a student working for him.

Lu Zhou could just ask the student to look over his report content. He would then asked the student to circle areas where they did not understand. Through this method, he would know which areas his peers found difficult.

Unfortunately, even though Professor Deligne gave him a PhD student for help, the PhD student did not help him on the theoretical aspects, only the PowerPoint slides.

Although Lu Zhou wanted to ask him which part of the thesis he did not understand, he would be completely confused as the thesis was completely incomprehensible to him.

This was due to the fact that the PhD student’s research direction was algebraic geometry. As such, he was not well-versed in the circle method or sieve method at all.

…

Time slowly passed by, and it was finally the report presentation day.

A crowd of mathematicians came to Princeton bringing with them their excitement and liveliness.

Princeton was quite attentive to the reception of mathematicians from all over the world.

The Princeton Institute for Advanced Study arranged for all of the mathematicians who participated in the conference to stay at the Princeton Hotel opposite Palmer Square.

Also, Princeton had not only arranged a conference during the day, but there was also a celebration party full of food at night.

However, Lu Zhou did not have time to think about these things. For him, every second before the report was valuable.

The next afternoon, at Lecture Hall 1 of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.

In addition to scholars who were invited to this conference, there were also unsolicited students. Some of them came with their supervisors, some were studying at Princeton, others even came all the way from Philadelphia or New York.

They did not know the specific time of the conference, so they got here in the early morning to reserve a spot.

For those people that arrived late, they simply sat on the aisles between the seats. Some people even sat outside in the corridor, with the news reporters.

The report was going to start at 2 pm and it would end at 3 pm. However, it might be extended depending on the number of questions asked.

If everything went well, after this conference, the editorial department of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study would organize a jury of four to six people. These juries would review the manuscript before they determined whether or not his thesis passes.

The success of Lu Zhou’s thesis depended on his abilities to explain the Group Structure Method.

Lu Zhou sat in the backstage of the lecture hall. He looked at the time on his phone before he took a deep breath.

There were five minutes left.

This was the tenth time he looked at the time on his phone.

He could not count how many times he took a deep breath.

Prior to this, Lu Zhou was informed by Professor Deligne on the number of people attending the conference.

There were more than 150 well-known scholars invited to this event. Some were from Paris, Germany, and China. He even knew some of the people coming.

In addition to the mathematics community, there were also media reporters from all over the world who were attending as well.

Soon, he would be standing in the spotlight of the world while drawing a picture of a century-old problem.

A staff member of the Institute for Advanced Study walked into the preparation room and he asked Lu Zhou respectfully, “Mr. Lu, it’s about time. Are you ready?”

Lu Zhou did not answer.

He turned around and looked at himself in the mirror before he reached out and adjusted his tie.

He took one final deep breath and smiled at himself in the mirror.

“I’m ready.”

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