Chapter 180 Letters Left by Professor Mirzakhani

In mathematics, or in most of the scientific world, most of the top prize winners are still almost all men. This is the current situation.

However, mathematics is more stringent than other fields in this regard.

Among the top prizes in mathematics, the Fields Medal, the Albert Prize, the Wolf Prize, the Crafoord Prize, the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences, the Breakthrough Prize in Mathematics, and other world-class top prizes, the only one that women have won is the Fields Medal.

The other prizes have not been awarded to women so far.

This may be related to the fact that the mathematics community is particularly keen on the "elite" system and hopes to avoid the "stigma" associated with measures such as quotas.

Of course, it is not just mathematics.

Many famous scientific awards face this problem as well.

Some award organizers are trying to increase the diversity of nominees and decision-making committees. However, it is difficult to change these in a group that tends to reach consensus and is not used to rapid change.

In mathematics in particular, progress is frustratingly slow.

And Professor Mariam Mirzakhani from Iran is the only woman to have won the Fields Medal so far.

Three years ago in 2014, she won the Fields Medal for her contribution to the study of surface symmetry. This broke the embarrassing situation that no woman had won the Fields Medal.

But today, this top female mathematician passed away forever due to breast cancer.

Hearing this news, Xu Chuan was stunned.

A Fields Medal winner died, and the only female winner. Why didn't he have any impression of this in his mind?

But then he reacted, shook his head slightly and sighed.

He substituted the wrong number. It is now 2017. If he hadn't been reborn, he would still be a sophomore at Nanjing University.

At that time, he had no contact with mathematics at all. When something big happened in the mathematics world, no one in the physics department discussed it.

When he went to Princeton to study with Witten and began to get in-depth contact with mathematics, Professor Mariam Mirzakhani had been dead for many years, and no one mentioned her.

But speaking of it, Professor Mariam Mirzakhani still has a little "relationship" with him.

At that time, he had just entered Princeton. There was a girl named Pahiya Miris, who seemed to be taught by Professor Mariam Mirzakhani.

At that time, she had recruited him on behalf of her former mentor, wanting him to study at Stanford University, but he was rejected directly.

"This is really helpless."

Xu Chuan shook his head and sighed slightly in his heart.

If he had any impression of this matter, he would have remembered it when he was recruited.

Then he would definitely vaguely mention this to Professor Mirzakhani and ask Professor Mariam Mirzakhani to have a physical examination.

Although breast cancer cannot be guaranteed to be 100% cured, the current clinical cure rate is still very high. If patients are diagnosed and treated early, they can achieve better treatment effects.

It's a pity for such a genius mathematician.

If he could have stepped into the mathematics world in his previous life, he would have known the cause and news of Professor Mirzakhani's death earlier. In this life, he might have saved a great mathematician.

However, this incident also reminded Xu Chuan. He tried hard to recall whether any relatives or friends in his memory would suffer from diseases in the future.

This recollection really reminded him of another thing.

In his thirties in his previous life, he received a call from his parents, saying that his uncle seemed to have died of lung cancer, and asked him if he could come back.

But at that time, he was already trapped in the United States and could not go home at all.

Apart from this, he had never heard of anything else in this regard.

"It should still be in time."

Xu Chuan thought, and the clouds of worry in his heart were slightly relieved: "In the future, let parents and relatives go for a physical examination every year. Spending some money is nothing. The most important thing is to ensure good health."

The death of Professor Mariam Mirzakhani is a big deal for the mathematics community.

After all, she is the first female Fields Medal winner in history. Her death is a heavy mourning for the mathematics community.

Xu Chuan followed his mentor Professor Deligne to attend her funeral and expressed his respect.

Professor Mirzakhani, who was sealed in the ice coffin, had short black hair. Except for his slightly pale face, he looked like he was asleep.

After walking around the ice coffin, Xu Chuan stepped out, looked at the blue sky in the distance, and sighed in his heart.

A 40-year-old Fields Medal winner, although she has passed the golden period of her academic career, is only halfway through her life, and there is still a long way to go in the future to bloom her glory.

However, now, less than a small square meter will seal everything about her.

This reminded Xu Chuan of himself in his previous life, who was almost the same age and had the same future, but fortunately, he could start over again.

After sending Professor Mirzakhani off, Xu Chuan was about to leave when a young girl found him.

"Excuse me, are you Mr. Xu Chuan?"

"It's me, who are you?"

Xu Chuan nodded and looked at the girl who stopped him with some doubts.

"Hello, Mr. Xu Chuan, my name is Macefield Gwen, and I am a student of Professor Mariam 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: "What do you want from me?"

"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?"

Macefield Gwen nodded and said: "If there is not another person named Xu Chuan who proves the Weyl-Berry 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 of them had only met once, during an exchange meeting in Princeton, and they hadn't even been able to chat for a few words. Why did Professor Mirzakhani leave him a letter?

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 him: "Sorry for the trouble."

"This is my duty. I'm leaving first. The teacher is leaving. I still have many things to deal with." Mesfield Gwen bowed 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 glanced at the lower stack. It looked like it was manuscript paper?

Xu Chuan's eyes returned to Xinyi and he looked at it.

"Hello, Xu."

"I'm glad you can receive this letter, but I should be no longer alive when you see this letter."

"I regretted not seeing your report in person at last year's Princeton exchange meeting, but I benefited a lot after watching the video of your report."

“The weakened form proof of the Weyl-Berry conjecture and your presentation 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, recorded them, and did some sorting. I hope they can be of some help to you."

"Unfortunately, when I was doing these sorting, I was diagnosed with late-stage breast cancer, and there was not 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 it"

"."

"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 Mariam 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 folding the letter carefully, 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, hyperbolic geometry, to ergodic theory and the popularity of symplectic geometry, to the topological nontriviality of counting functions and Berry phases, and the study of Berry curvature. It spans several fields 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 knew 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, functions are transformed into subgroups and connected to intermediate domains and sets, 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 insights and inspirations in mathematics are richer than the world knows.

"Such a mathematical genius. Alas~"

At the desk, Xu Chuan sighed and carefully put away the manuscripts and documents on the desk.

Then he got up to wash and go to bed.

He will return to Princeton tomorrow, and he will study these things carefully.

After paying homage and seeing them off, Xu Chuan followed Deligne back to Princeton.

However, after returning, he asked Professor Deligne for a week's leave, not to go out and play, but to concentrate on sorting out the manuscripts left to him by Professor Mirzakhani.

After all, although the knowledge on it is rich, it is all Professor Mirzakhani's essays and some ideas, as well as some unfinished calculations.

He needs to sort out these things systematically, and then conduct in-depth research on them.

Professor Deligne had no opinion on his leave, nor did he ask him what he was going to do with the leave.

Even if he was going to play, he would agree.

If Princeton did not have the habit of tutors giving students a holiday, Deligne would have wanted to give Xu Chuan a holiday a long time ago.

Not to mention the study in the past two months, the several months he wasted at CERN cannot be counted. In the first half of this year, from February to May, he really saw the madness of this student.

Twenty-four hours a day, more than fourteen hours are spent on study. He and Edward Witten together have barely enough energy to satisfy him.

Deligne wondered strangely, if this continues, will he have nothing to teach in another year or two?

There is no way, this student's speed of understanding and absorbing knowledge is really too fast.

Moreover, his diligence makes people want to cry.

Deligne thought that he was diligent enough in studying when he was young, but in contrast, his diligence can be said to be nothing.

He does not attend parties, does not go out to travel, and is not interested in electronic products and online entertainment. Every day, apart from eating and sleeping, he only studies.

It's a bit like a robot built specifically for learning.

Such a person should be a freak and extremely difficult to deal with, such as Gregory Perelman, who proved the Poincare conjecture. He is such a freak.

He almost rejected all social activities and awards. He studied mathematics like an ascetic. Even the Fields Medal could not attract him out of the deep mountains and old forests.

The personalities of the two can be said to be almost identical. Apart from being interested in learning, they are not very interested in other things.

But compared with Perelman, his student's social skills are not weak. At least, within the normal range of an ordinary person.

For example, after returning to China, he would bring some special products and gifts to him and Witten, participate in various awards, receive and express his own opinions and remarks, and if he needs to hold a report meeting, he will not refuse as long as the reason is justified. This is two completely extremes from Perelman.