Chapter 250 Go to Receive the Award

Martin Chalfie, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, once said in an interview that if you are lucky enough to make a little achievement, people will do a terrible thing to you——

They'll start saying to you, "Hey, you might win a Nobel Prize." And then from the first week of October onwards, you'll start having constant insomnia and hypersensitivity to any ringing sound, even the neighbor's phone. It will also make you suspicious...

Until, the day you actually get a call from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

In addition to the Swedish-style surprise, the main reason for this is to ensure that the winners will not show off in advance, destroying the expectations of all human beings or scientific researchers in society.

The call to announce the winner will usually come a few minutes before the draw. Therefore, the Nobel Prize phone call can be said to be one of the most anticipated calls in the world, and it can make people experience a bungee jumping excitement in just a few minutes.

Lu Zhou who received this call also experienced a bungee jumping stimulation in his heart in just one minute.

As for why he, who obviously hadn't expected the Nobel Prize, experienced the thrill of bungee jumping in just one minute...

Because unfortunately, it is obviously impossible for Nobel to find him...

But Crawford.

Well, the Crawford Award is actually not bad.

It can even be said that it is very strong.

The award was established in 1980 with donations from industrialist Holger Crafford and his wife Anna Greta Crafford, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is responsible for its selection. But in the larger collection of natural sciences, it has the reputation of a small Nobel Prize.

As for why?

Because the original intention of this award is to fill the gap in the Nobel Prize, both the process and the specifications of the award ceremony are based on the standards of the Nobel Prize.

The scope of the award includes astronomy, mathematics, earth science, and life sciences that are not covered by the Nobel Prize. The awarding mechanism is selected once a year, and there is a rotation between astronomy, mathematics, earth science, and biological science.

And this year, it is the turn of astronomy and mathematics, which will be awarded to the most outstanding recent contributors in this field.

Meanwhile, the prize money is half a million dollars.

Like the Nobel Prize, the Crafford Prize, which is also selected and awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, usually informs the winners a few minutes before the draw, so that Lu Zhou, who was having dinner with Witten, was disturbed by the sudden call caught off guard.

In fact, the reason why Lu Zhou won the award was not because of Goldbach's conjecture, but because of his series of research in the field of prime numbers. However, the paper published in the "Annual Journal of Mathematics" a few days ago refreshed his list of achievements again.

And still such an achievement that cannot be ignored.

Therefore, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences added the achievement of the Goldbach-Lu theorem to the profile of the winners published on the official website.

Lu Zhou was a little dazed by the half a million dollars and medals that suddenly jumped from the sky. He couldn't even remember how he returned from the cafeteria to his office.

He only remembered that Witten smiled and patted him on the shoulder, congratulated him, and when he came back to his senses, he was already sitting in his office and turned on the computer.

After logging in to the official website of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Lu Zhou refreshed several times, and finally saw the list of Crafford Awards published on the official website.

And his name is impressively on this list.

As for the other two winners, they are Professor Roy Kerr from Canterbury University in New Zealand and Professor Roger Branford from Stanford University in the United States. The two shared the Astronomy Award for their significant contributions to the study of "black holes with angular momentum and their effects"...

As for the mathematics award, naturally he is the only one.

Seeing this, Lu Zhou breathed a sigh of relief. He was sure that the phone call he received just now was not a new type of fraud or a belated April Fool's Day joke. A stone hanging in his heart finally fell to the ground.

Then, Lu Zhou casually closed the web page of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and opened another web page.

Now that the news of the award has been confirmed, there is only one thing he is curious about now.

This half a million dollars in prize money.

How much does it cost to convert into RMB?

...

Two hours after receiving the call, Lu Zhou received an email from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in his mailbox.

Although I don't know how they know their email account, but considering that they can even get their private phone number, it seems that it is not difficult to have an email account.

After all, whether it is on the professor's profile page on the official website of Princeton University or in the personal information on Arxiv, he has linked his email account.

In this email from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, apart from an electronic invitation letter, the above content is mainly a written retelling of what has been said in the previous phone call.

For example, the timing of the award ceremony, and the banquet after the award ceremony.

For another example, as part of the Crafford Award celebration, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences also held a three-day academic exchange meeting, and invited him to give a special report on the winners at the exchange meeting.

As for the reporting time, it is naturally one hour.

Just when Lu Zhou turned off the email, took out the PPT used in the Princeton report, and was about to modify it and use it again, suddenly another phone call came.

The caller this time was not a stranger, but Old Tang.

As soon as the phone was connected, a familiar voice came from the other side in a hurry.

"Have you proved Goldbach's conjecture?!"

Hearing this sentence, Lu Zhou was stunned for a while, and subconsciously replied.

"Well, what's the matter?"

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a while, and then he sighed softly.

"...Nothing, just a little surprised." Pausing for a moment, Old Tang smiled and continued, "Today, there was a conference in the Department of Mathematics, and in the middle of the meeting, suddenly a copy of "Annual of Mathematics" was sent in. Originally We are still discussing this year's enrollment plan, but in the second half of the meeting, the content of the discussion turned into you."

Although the tone was only an understatement, in Old Tang's heart, there was a lot of emotion.

When Lu Zhou asked him about the distribution of Mersenne prime numbers in the cafeteria, he advised Lu Zhou not to think about these things, but to concentrate on developing in the direction of functional analysis and applied mathematics.

As a result, fate is so wonderful.

In just a few short years, he has grown to what he is now.

For this student, Tang Zhiwei was very pleased and proud of him from the bottom of his heart.

Hearing what Old Tang said, Lu Zhou couldn't help but be a little bit dumbfounded.

"This... how embarrassing."

He originally thought that his thesis would kill a few unfinished papers at most, but he didn't expect to mess up the meeting of his alma mater.

Old Tang smiled, instead of continuing on this topic, he continued talking.

"You have completed your doctorate now. Although the school is not in a hurry for you to come back, there is still a graduation certificate and a degree certificate waiting for you. Principal Xu and Director Lu are both urging me, let me ask you. I Just ask for them, when do you plan to come back and finish this doctorate?"

At the beginning, Jinling University and Princeton University signed a joint training program on Lu Zhou. After Lu Zhou completed his doctorate at Princeton, he could get a doctorate from Jinling University after returning to China to give a report.

Originally, I still had a teaching position, but now it seems that I can relax a little bit.

Regarding Lu Zhou's plan to stay in Princeton as a professor, the school definitely supports it.

After all, talent is not RMB, and it won’t add value if you keep it in your pocket. Only leaders born as political workers like to do this kind of thing.

In fact, many principals who are born in scientific research know in their hearts that no matter how much domestic universities invest in talent training, the hematopoietic ability of cutting-edge scientific researchers is definitely incomparable with a world-class university like Princeton.

Whether it is an academic environment or hardware equipment, this gap cannot be changed overnight. Just like solving a major mathematical problem, everything requires the efforts of several generations.

Encouraging talents to go to higher-level platforms to absorb scientific research nutrients is also a long-standing talent training policy of major universities.

The supporting policies include the introduction of overseas talents, such as the Thousand Talents Program and so on.

And this is the so-called "send it out first, then invite it back".

Even if you can't come back when you are young, you can stay there and train more foreign students for the motherland.

To give the simplest example, if a scholar from King University can become a professor in Princeton, then King University can have at least one more Princeton international student every once in a while (in principle, only one foreign guide is allowed for the same university’s public newspaper), And this quota was almost non-existent in previous years.

At the same time, even if Jin Da could not get this quota, it would not disappear out of thin air. Under the condition of the same ability, Chinese professors are more inclined to recruit Chinese students, which is almost a norm (there are counterexamples).

However, Jin Da’s reassurance is superfluous. Lu Zhou needs to learn a lot, and also needs overseas scientific research experience. At the same time, Princeton’s various resources can also provide assistance for him to complete the system tasks.

When the time is almost up, he will naturally go back.

After all, he is a nostalgic person.

Lu Zhou thought for a while and replied: "I will go to Stockholm soon, but it won't take long, and I will be back in early June."

"Stockholm?" Old Tang was stunned for a moment, then asked in confusion, "What are you doing in Sweden?"

Lu Zhou smiled embarrassedly.

"Accept the award."