A genius? I just love studying.

Chapter 102 Half-Step Fei Award
Barbaria Public Welfare Director's Office,

Sun Jianfeng and Xiao Ming, the two responsible persons, were sitting by the window, looking down at the bustling metropolis street scene and the busy oxen and horses rushing to work, leisurely sipping a pot of Mother Tree Da Hong Pao tea.

The competition is in full swing, but as the overall organizer, there's naturally no need for the two of them to do any work.

"I never expected Rongcheng No. 2 High School to have such courage!"

After taking a sip of tea, Xiao Ming said quietly, "What a pity."

Sun Jianfeng also expressed some regret, "It seems we underestimated that little guy."

In his view, the fact that Rongcheng No. 2 Middle School was able to arrange jobs for Chen Hui's uncle and aunt so decisively could only mean that Chen Hui had demonstrated a value worthy of their doing so.

They were, after all, thousands of miles away, and he trusted the judgment of those around Chen Hui; they could see more.

Xiao Ming shook his head. "That's not necessarily true."

What kind of school is Rongcheng No. 2 Middle School?

"If we can produce even one slightly better student, we'll naturally treat it like a treasure."

"If he were truly a genius, why would he go to Rongcheng No. 2 High School?"

He believed that Chen Hui had some ability, otherwise he wouldn't have won first place in the provincial competition. But he also believed in the selection ability of Huaxia's exam-oriented education. If you are an artistic genius, there is still a possibility of being buried. How could a mathematical genius be buried?

Therefore, it's hard to say how much of Chen Hui's preliminary results were inflated.

Sun Jianfeng also shook his head; it was an intuition typical of someone with a science and engineering background. But he wasn't going to argue with Xiao Ming about this. "Aren't we going to start our plan yet?"

"Public opinion hasn't reversed yet, so there's no rush!"

Xiao Ming was very happy to have the key to success. Whether the matter succeeded or not, it would not cause any loss to him or Barbary. If it failed, the worst that would happen was that he would not make any money. If it succeeded, it would be a path to heaven. He naturally had no psychological burden about such a risk-free and highly profitable matter.

Sun Jianfeng, having been influenced by Xiao Ming, also understood this point and now appeared much more composed. However, since it was his first time doing something like this, he was inevitably worried. "The CMO position is about to be filled. If he really makes it into the top sixty, he can choose between Tsinghua and Peking University, and our plan will be ruined."

"I think we should finalize this before the CMO!"

Xiao Ming chuckled and shook his head, "You underestimate the difficulty of being a CMO."

"Since the CMO was first held in 1986, have you ever seen a high school freshman make it into the top 60?"

"To be honest, the CMO is no less difficult than our competition. Although it only tests high school knowledge, it requires more emphasis on logical thinking. Or to put it more bluntly, unless you are a truly outstanding math genius, you can't get into the top sixty."

"Winning the CMO gold medal is no less difficult than winning the Asai gold medal. Instead of worrying about that, you should be worried that Asai might actually win the gold medal!"

Xiao Ming said with a smile, "You shouldn't worry so much. Just follow the plan."

Sun Jianfeng nodded, realizing he had indeed been overthinking things. Having hosted so many competitions and seen many true mathematical geniuses and experts, he naturally understood the difficulty of winning the Asahi Gold Award; it was not something a high school freshman could easily achieve.

However, he could only manage a wry smile.

In the end, they still had to look at Chen Hui's performance in CMO, which shows that even they themselves knew that their competition was far inferior to the prestige of CMO.

……

At Rongcheng No. 2 Middle School, Chen Hui was unaware of what had happened in Lin'an and the conspiracy surrounding him. Right now, he only needed to focus on the problems at hand.

At least in the world of mathematics, things are black and white, simple and pure.

Looking at the question before him, Chen Hui thought for a moment, then picked up his pen and began to answer.

The first question in the finals still tested abstract algebra, which Chen Hui is now very good at. Zhang Anguo has not been completely useless these days. After deciding to choose the algebra and number theory track, he studied the past few years' questions from Barbary and recommended a series of books to Chen Hui.

Given Chen Hui's learning speed, his current understanding and depth of abstract algebra far surpasses that of ordinary mathematics graduate students.

This problem can be solved easily if you understand the basic concepts of rings and modules, isomorphisms and equivalence classes, the properties of finitely generated modules, the meaning and role of tensor products in module theory, and finally combine them with linear algebra.

First, we connect the R-lattice with the Z-module, then analyze the effect of the matrix in R on L, and finally perform a basis transformation. We can then conclude that the number of R-lattice equivalence classes in V is infinite.

Finally, we will prove this conclusion by contradiction.

It took me less than fifteen minutes to complete the entire answer process.

That's how mathematics is; it's easy for those who know it, and difficult for those who don't.

This time, Chen Hui did not work out the calculations on the draft paper, but answered directly in the answer editor. Although he had not been using computers for long, Chen Hui's learning speed was amazing, and he was already familiar with using computers.

Unfortunately, the "Computer" attribute is not displayed on the panel; perhaps only traditional exam subjects would appear on the panel.

Chen Hui didn't care. The traditional exam subjects were enough for him to live a good life. This once again proved that the exam subjects in the exam-oriented education system were still quite reasonable.

It must be said that Barbary's technical capabilities are quite good. Bugs that occurred in previous years, such as refresh lag and clearing of unsubmitted answers, have been fixed, and the overall answering experience is still very smooth.

The formula editor is still not as good as LaTeX, but it's within an acceptable range.

Clicking on the next question, Chen Hui became engrossed in answering it.

……

In the lounge at Barbary's headquarters in Lin'an, Ran Peng and Yuan Xinyi, who had just exchanged ideas at Jiangcheng University, met again.

Both of them are members of the organizing committee of the Azerbaijan International Airport (Azerbaijan), so they were naturally invited to come.

Besides them, the lounge also included Tian Yang, a professor at Yanbei University and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lin Shan, Zhang Yitang, Sun Binyang, Alessio Figali...

Several of them are academicians, and the rest are also renowned scholars in the mathematics community. Alessio Figali is even a Fields Medal winner.

Otherwise, Ran Peng wouldn't have come to join in the fun.

Even outstanding young scientists like Yuan Xinyi and Yangtze River Scholars like Ran Peng can only sit at the bottom of the list here. In fact, it is an honor for them to be members of the organizing committee.

Sun Jianfeng and Xiao Ming, who were originally drinking tea in their office, also came to the lounge. Although they weren't involved in academia, these people were all well-known figures in the field, and it was always good to network with them—it was a businessman's instinct. "Xinyi, how's your research going?"

Suddenly, Tian Yang, who was sitting at the head of the table, spoke up.

Although there are several academicians present, there are still differences between academicians, which is why Tian Yang was able to sit in the first seat.

As for Alessio Figali, the winner of the Philippine International Film Festival, his status is naturally distinguished, but since he is a guest, he can only sit in the first seat for guests.

"Teacher, the general framework has been drafted, but there are still some key issues, and we haven't thought of solutions yet."

Yuan Xinyi answered truthfully.

Although he works at Jiangcheng University, his master's and doctoral supervisors are Tian Yang. He only spent a few years working in the West after his postdoctoral studies. A few years ago, Jiangcheng University invited him back through its overseas talent recruitment program.

"If you have any difficulties, just tell us. There are so many outstanding mathematicians here today. Let's discuss them together. Let's treat today as a seminar."

Tian Yang said with a smile, "If we really achieve results, it will be considered that everyone has contributed to the edifice of mathematics, and it will be a meritorious deed."

Xiao Ming's gaze sharpened; he hadn't expected things to develop in this direction.

They, Barbara, spent a huge amount of money and resources to build this stage, and Tian Yang actually borrowed it to perform a play.

Although Tian Yang is a pivotal figure in the Chinese mathematical community, not only has numerous achievements of his own, but also has considerable influence in the international mathematical community, and represents the Yanbei Mathematical Research Center.

However, it won't be easy for him to invite Philharmonic Award winners Alessio Figali and Zhang Yitang, among others.

However, Yuan Xinyi is, after all, Chinese, and an outstanding mathematician among the younger generation in China. When the organizing committee invited members, he had a brief understanding of the research topics that Yuan Xinyi was currently conducting.

If this project is successful, Yuan Xinyi, who is only 38 years old, will have a chance to compete for the Philippine Prize in two years.

The first Philippine Filipino award winner cultivated by China itself and of Chinese nationality.

If it can contribute to this, then doing this favor is worthwhile.

Upon realizing this, Xiao Ming not only showed no dissatisfaction, but also immediately arranged for someone to push a whiteboard into the lounge.

"When attempting to use the Beilinson-Drinfeld geometrization method to handle egomorphisms of n≥4, conventional perverse sheaf theory loses crucial phase information when characterizing quantized deformations."

Yuan Xinyi naturally didn't try to hide anything and spoke up, while also writing down some of his research findings and the key points that were troubling him on the whiteboard.

If he wants to get guidance from others, he naturally has to show some sincerity.

He believed that everyone present was a great mathematician, trusted their academic ethics, and with so many people there and surveillance cameras, he wasn't worried about his idea being plagiarized.

He understood perfectly well what the teacher meant; if the discussion yielded any results, he would definitely be the biggest beneficiary.

In the field of mathematics, mentorship is often placed more emphasis than in other disciplines.

Because the subfields of modern mathematics are very small, even researchers in the same major field may not understand the work of people in other subfields. This basically means that many fields can only produce results by following specific scholars. In this sense, mathematical research is highly dependent on scholars.

We learned in high school math that the important thing in learning math is not the answers, but the answers to questions.

Mathematical articles don't go into detail about the motivation behind every step. Self-study requires a lot of time to figure out why each step is done the way it is, but having a good teacher can solve a lot of problems.

This situation exists even in the introductory stage of mathematics, and it will only become more serious in later, more specialized subjects. In addition, a good teacher will have a higher understanding of the knowledge, with a comprehensive perspective, making learning naturally easier.

Many mathematical papers, due to space limitations or mathematicians' tendency to hoard their work, often contain numerous defensive proofs such as "easily obtained," "provable," and "noticeable." These do not affect the verification of the proof's correctness, but without them, the proof's readability would be very poor.

There are also numerous trial-and-error processes that don't appear on the proof paper, like scaffolding in a building. Once the house is built, it's dismantled cleanly, leaving no trace of how the building was initially constructed. There are also various detours taken by predecessors, which also won't appear in the paper but are hidden in the pile of manuscripts. These are the foundations of mathematical schools of thought, which can save a true mathematical genius countless hours.

Throughout the long history of mathematics, in the century since the time of Gauss, the "Prince of Mathematicians," the center of mathematics has only changed once, gradually shifting from the prestigious Göttingen School to Princeton.

Strictly speaking, this could not even be considered a typical transfer, since many outstanding mathematicians from Göttingen were almost all "transferred" to Princeton due to special circumstances.

Since 1930, Princeton's central position in the global mathematics field has been extremely stable. Compared to the certainty of the United States holding the top spot in the world's GDP for many years, Princeton's stability as a mathematics center is even greater and has almost never been seriously shaken.

The reason why Russian and German mathematics is so strong is because of the guidance of the great Euler.

Euler spent the first and last years in Russia, and the middle 25 years in Germany, where he founded the Berlin Academy of Sciences. Gauss, on the other hand, directly laid the foundation for the Göttingen School.

Chebyshev, who came after Russia, also laid the foundation for the Moscow School, and the famous Markov and Lyapunov were his direct disciples.

The flourishing of French mathematics owes much to Cauchy, Lagrange, and Laplace.

British mathematics is relatively less prominent, largely because British mathematicians were affected by the Newton-Leibniz dispute, which created a rift between them and continental European mathematicians, resulting in a century-long break in the transmission of mathematical knowledge. Even though it was later reconnected, it never truly returned to its ideal state.

Why does this situation exist? The root cause lies in the fact that there are many crossroads in mathematical research, and the choice of these crossroads is crucial for researchers. Once the wrong choice is made, there is a high possibility that a person's talent will be wasted in the wrong direction, and it will be difficult to achieve the desired results in a lifetime.

In fact, this is true of any science. When research finally comes to the point that the biggest bottleneck is that the scholar's own energy and lifespan are not enough, so being able to mentor a disciple can be considered a kind of continuation.

Tian Yang is 66 years old this year, and he has reached the age to take on apprentices, especially young and clever ones. He hopes that one day when people talk about Chinese mathematics, they will think of the Yanbei School and its founder, Tian Yang, first!

He naturally wanted to become a legendary mathematician like Gauss, Euler, and Cauchy, but he also knew he was still far from it. After all, this was China, a country without even a single Philippine Nobel laureate of Chinese descent.

Among the short, he believed he was qualified to be the leader of the school of thought.

He is not an unknown figure. Aside from his own contributions to the mathematics community, he has published numerous papers in top mathematics journals, solved a series of major problems in geometry and mathematical physics, and won the highly prestigious Waterman Award and Weber Prize.

He was the speaker at the 1990 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) for a 45-minute presentation and the 2002 International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) for a one-hour presentation, and was also the first scholar from mainland China to give a one-hour presentation at the ICM.

To be invited to give a presentation at the International Congress of Mathematicians requires at least a major breakthrough or significant achievement, and the speaker of a one-hour presentation is a strong contender for the Feynman Prize.

Unfortunately, the Fields Medal favors algebraic geometry and number theory, while Professor Tian Yang's expertise lies in geometric analysis.

Of course, the more crucial factor was his feud with his Fields Medal-winning teacher, which damaged his academic reputation and ultimately led to his failure in the final round of Fields Medal selection.

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to call him a half-step winner of the Philippe Award.

(End of this chapter)