Chapter 304: A Face That Doesn't Fit In
At 9 o'clock in the morning, the 2015 Mathematics Annual Conference officially began. The lecture hall was packed with people. The meeting did not require formal attire, so many people, like Xu Qingzhou, wore casual clothes.
Even for this kind of national conference, the process is similar to that of a school sports meeting, with leaders of all kinds delivering speeches, paying tribute and welcoming speeches, affirming the academic achievements of Xiaguo scholars this year, and looking forward to the future.
What was particularly special was that Shigefumi Mori, President of the International Mathematical Union and winner of the Fields Medal, came to offer his congratulations.
At 10 ., the three most popular mathematics awards were officially announced.
The award ceremony was hosted by Cai Xinyuan, President of the Mathematical Society.
"In the past two years, the mathematics community in Xiaguo has made extraordinary achievements."
"Congratulations, Lin Feiqun, an academician of the Xia National Academy of Sciences, won the 12th Hua Luogeng Mathematics Award."
Two middle-aged men with slightly thinning hair came to the stage, took the certificates and medals from Cai Xinyuan and Vice President Professor Qin Yizhen, and then gave their acceptance speeches.
Xu Qingzhou followed suit and applauded.
The Hua Luogeng Mathematics Award is intended to reward senior mathematicians with outstanding academic achievements and social contributions.
This veteran academician has been engaged in the research of algorithms and theories of nonlinear optimization for a long time and deserves this award. However, since the word "senior" is involved, he definitely has no hope.
As for the latter two, Xu Qingzhou thinks it is more likely to be the Zhong Jiaqing Mathematics Award. For graduate students, the Chern Mathematics Award is also a possibility, after all, it is awarded to outstanding young mathematicians.
19 years old, is that considered young?
The process soon came to the Chern Mathematics Award.
Cai Xinyuan's speech:
"This winner is very special. He has created a miracle in the field of number theory in two years. The results of his research are a landmark contribution to the study of prime numbers. There is no doubt that his name will be recorded in the great history of mathematics."
Before he even read out the name, everyone's eyes were already looking in Xu Qingzhou's direction.
There's no way, this young face seems out of place among a group of old people.
Xu Qingzhou sat calmly.
Everyone's eyes were filled with mixed feelings, admiration, amazement, jealousy, and hostility.
However, no one was surprised that Xu Qingzhou won the award.
This type of award is different from literary awards. Even if the jury has not announced the winner, everyone can guess it almost exactly.
When reading literary works, a thousand people can have a thousand Hamlets.
When it comes to academic research, there is only one truth and different people have different opinions.
His photo and profile appeared on the big screen.
"Congratulations to Xu Qingzhou, a young scholar from the National Thousand Talents Program, for winning the 15th Chern Mathematics Award!"
There was warm applause in the lecture hall.
Xu Qingzhou walked onto the stage. Cai Xinyuan and Qin Yizheng smiled gently and looked at the young man with emotion in their eyes.
"Congratulations, young man."
"Thank you."
After receiving the certificate and medal, Xu Qingzhou began to give a brief acceptance speech.
“Dear jury, representatives of Chern’s family, colleagues, friends, and those who have been following this award ceremony in various ways.”
"Tonight, standing here holding the great honor of the Chern Prize in Mathematics, I feel extremely excited and at the same time deeply humbled."
“Mathematics is an ancient and eternal subject.”
In the audience, Gu Zhizhong smiled and nodded slightly, thinking that the future of mathematics in Xiaguo is promising. The phenomenon of seniority in Xiaguo's academic circles has always existed. In addition to outstanding ability, you also need to have experience. In recent years, many young mathematicians have indeed emerged in Xiaguo. Fu Yun, a student of Lao Zhong from the Academy of Sciences, completely solved the symplectic solution problem of the closure of nilpotent orbits and characterized its birational geometry.
There is also Lei Shanming, who proposed the concept of "strong zero condition" and discovered the nonlinear intrinsic strongly degenerate structure of the incompressible fluid equations.
There is also a student of that old guy Pang Handong from Fudan University, whose name is Yu Yankun, who independently solved the long-standing open problem of the global well-posedness of solutions to the two-dimensional elasticity equations.
These three young people have achieved great success and are already professors at prestigious universities. If Xu Qingzhou had not appeared, two of them would definitely have won the Chern Mathematics Award.
It's a pity that with this kid's achievements, the Fields Medal is not a problem for him, and he can also look forward to the Wolf Prize in Mathematics in January next year.
Academician Chu also had a smile on his face. Like Gu Zhizhong, at their age, they had already achieved everything they deserved. Seeing their students show up made them happier than standing on the stage themselves.
Xu Qingzhou spoke eloquently for three minutes, bowed slightly to express his gratitude, and walked off the stage calmly.
After the Zhong Jiaqing Award was presented, the opening ceremony was over.
"Congratulations, Xiao Xu." Gu Zhizhong and Chu Jiangfeng both came over.
"Thank you Professor Gu, thank you Professor Chu."
Xu Qingzhou smiled modestly.
Chu Jiangfeng shook his head and said with a smile: "No need to thank us, it's all the result of your own hard work."
"When you first came on stage, I was worried that you would be nervous. Well, young people should not be surprised by praise or criticism. This is the mentality that they should have."
Gu Zhizhong nodded.
Xu Qingzhou thought that he might be nervous about other things, but he was very familiar with receiving awards.
He just said these words in his heart. He pointed at an old man in the crowd and asked curiously, "Who is that?"
When he was speaking on the stage, he felt that the old man was quite hostile towards him.
That look seemed to want to eat him up.
Gu Zhizhong took a look and said disdainfully, "That old guy. Pang Handong from Fudan University."
He and Xu Qingzhou have said many times that people engaged in academics must be able to sit on the bench and concentrate on academic work. This old guy is already very old, but he is still thinking about the little power he has.
"Professor Qin just said that there are two vacancies for the Chern Mathematics Award each year. This old guy's student is one of the candidates, and his chances of being selected are quite high," Gu Zhizhong continued.
Academician Chu said: "Your appearance directly broke the balance of the original three candidates. After much deliberation, the judging panel simply chose only one person."
Xu Qingzhou nodded, understanding the hostility.
Pang Handong.
He seemed somewhat impressed.
When we were gossiping in the dormitory, we heard that Gu Zhizhong once publicly ridiculed Pang Handong in a mathematics competition, saying that he was not interested in academic research but in office politics.
Chu Jiangfeng smiled and said, "Don't worry, with Lao Gu and I here, Pang Handong won't be able to cause any big trouble."
Xu Qingzhou nodded and thanked him again.
After greeting the professors and scholars who had congratulated him one by one and dealing with the reporters blocking the entrance of the hall, Xu Qingzhou went directly to the arranged hotel for retreat.
In the afternoon, Hua Luogeng Award winner Lin Feiqun gave a report on the trust region method algorithm design and convergence analysis.
In addition to the large invited reports, there will be group reports in seven areas including algebra and number theory, computational mathematics, analytical mathematics, probability and statistics, etc.
Xu Qingzhou planned to listen selectively, such as geometry and topology.
Zhang Yitang used analytic number theory and arithmetic geometry in the entire proof process to prove that there are countless pairs of adjacent prime numbers with a spacing of no more than 7000 million.
(End of this chapter)
