867 Professor Faltings“ Notes

Three years to solve the Riemann hypothesis…

Countless people have said similar words.

Faltings could recall at least a dozen people claiming the same thing.

One of them had even passed away.

That person was called Weil, the person who proposed the famous Weil’s conjecture.

Apparently, in his younger years, he tried to challenge the “zero-point distribution of the ζ function for algebraic curves over a finite field” problem, which in turn created the Weil’s conjecture. He optimistically thought that this might be true for the real Riemann’s conjecture as well.

He even made a plan, that if he found the proof of Riemann’s conjecture, he would deliberately postpone the publication of his thesis to the outside world until 1959… which was the 100th anniversary of the Riemann hypothesis.

However, his optimism soon disappeared.

In the 1970s, Professor Deligne finally proved Weil’s conjecture, but the Riemann hypothesis was still far out of reach.

Faltings could still clearly remember that during Weil’s final days, he was still hoping to see the proof of the Riemann hypothesis in his lifetime, even though it was highly unlikely.

Three days quickly went by.

The academic conference came to an end, and scholars from all over the world began their return journeys.

During these two days, Professor Faltings didn’t ask Lu Zhou to take him up the mountain again. He spent his time at the Jin Ling University campus.

According to the university forum posts, this old professor went to the library, and he even attended a mathematics lecture at the new campus… Even though he didn’t understand Chinese, he could still understand the symbols on the blackboard.

On the final day, Lu Zhou asked Wang Peng to send Professor Faltings and some of his other mathematician friends to the airport. Wang Peng had to find a larger car to accommodate all of these people.

Even though Professor Deligne was supposed to be in Wang Peng’s car, unfortunately, Deligne left soon after the report. When Lu Zhou called his phone, Deligne was already back in his Princeton office…

Lu Zhou decided to be a good host and went into the airport with them.

Before boarding the plane, Faltings suddenly handed him a notebook. Without saying anything, he took his suitcase and walked away.

Tao Zhexuan asked, “Hey, let me see, what’s in there?”

Tao Zhexuan watched Faltings walk away and excitedly tried to grab the notebook from Lu Zhou.

Lu Zhou didn’t stop him. He let go of the notebook.

Molina wanted to read the notebook as well, but she didn’t want to look weak in front of her “competitor”. Therefore, she tried to secretly glance at the notebook, which was in Professor Tao’s hands.

Lu Zhou noticed her movements and smiled.

“It’s fine, just read it, it’s not… any secrets. If it inspires you, I’m sure Faltings will be happy.”

Molina turned red and took a deep breath to calm herself down.

“Thank you.”

After that, she began reading the notebook with Tao Zhexuan.

She knew she couldn’t keep up with Professor Tao’s reading speed, so she took out her phone and began taking photos.

Lu Zhou didn’t stop her. He walked to the vending machine nearby and bought three cans of coffee. After giving a can of coffee to each of them, he sat down at a bench nearby.

A couple of minutes went by, and he was half-finished with his coffee. Professor Tao closed the notebook and looked at Lu Zhou with an excited expression.

“The things written here are very interesting! Most of them are Faltings’ own thoughts regarding the Riemann hypothesis. They are more like research ideas, where some are proven, and some haven’t been touched. I recommend you to read through it seriously, it might inspire you.”

Lu Zhou nodded and smiled.

“I was going to do that anyway.”

“Okay then, it’s time to say goodbye,” Professor Tao said while looking at the time on his watch. He smiled at Lu Zhou and said, “My flight is about to start boarding. I hope I can see you at the mathematician congress next year. I look forward to your 60-minute report.”

Lu Zhou: “Well, it looks like I have a lot of work to do then.”

Tao Zhexuan smiled and waved goodbye. He then grabbed his suitcase and said one last thing before leaving.

“Haha, I believe in you!”

He disappeared into the security check crowd.

Molina stared at Lu Zhou for a while. She put her phone back into her bag and said nervously, “Thank you… Even though you helped me, I won’t be merciful.”

Lu Zhou grinned and said, “Please don’t, I don’t care who solves this problem, I just want it to be solved.”

If someone can solve the Riemann hypothesis with this notebook alone, why doesn’t Faltings just solve it himself?

Lu Zhou didn’t think this notebook would help Molina solve Riemann’s hypothesis.

The reason why Professor Faltings gave him this notebook was because Faltings hoped Lu Zhou could be inspired by his notes.

The content in this notebook wasn’t even worthy of publication, and very few people could find value from this notebook.

And clearly, Molina Abel wasn’t one of them.

Even though her thesis on the critical line theorem was impressive, it was nowhere near groundbreaking.

Otherwise, she wouldn’t have published in a journal such as Mathematics Chronicle. Instead, she would have published in Annual Mathematics.

Molina looked satisfied, as if the pictures on her phone were a treasure map. She wanted to fly back to Princeton as soon as possible and organize the photos. Lu Zhou went silent for a second before saying, “Can I give you some advice?”

Molina looked at Lu Zhou with a nervous expression.

“What advice?”

Lu Zhou looked at her and said, “Don’t have high expectations for the notebook, see how Professor Tao only briefly read through it and gave it back to me without writing anything down.”

Molina paused for a second and frowned.

“So you’re saying… that the stuff in this notebook isn’t important?”

Lu Zhou gave her a strange look.

“No, Professor Faltings’ research is important, there’s no doubt about that. I’m just saying that… This thing is only useful in the right hands.”

Molina: “…”

F*ck sake!

This a**hole!

I’m so close to slapping him in the face!

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