The unparalleled talent of the country started from Harbin Institute of Technology

Chapter 99: Applied Mathematics Seminar, is there going to be an academic conference? No, wait a little longer!
October 1, 1978, was National Day. Wang Duoyu and Zhu Ling had originally planned to go to Tiananmen Square to watch the flag-raising ceremony, but due to the gunfire last night, they eventually canceled the event.

What's more, Wang Duoyu lives in Zhongguancun outside the city, which is now a suburban countryside. It would be too troublesome to go into the city.

In the office of the Institute of Mathematics, Wang Duoyu sat in the corner. It was his first time attending an applied mathematics seminar, and to be honest, he was quite nervous.

Tao Fangqi is too busy, and I don’t know what he is busy with. Apart from meeting him just now and exchanging a few words, I don’t know where he is now.

I clearly used to pay special attention to Wang Duoyu, but now something seems to be wrong.

However, Wang Duoyu had already seen Su Buqing, Duan Xuefu, Wu Wenjun and others, all of whom were big shots. They were gathering in groups of three or four to chat, and the topic of their conversation was the relatively hot international mathematics topics recently.

The news about the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Helsinki was not given much attention in the newspapers, and no one in our country had ever attended this conference.

However, even if no one participated, it does not mean that they did not know about it, because many foreign professors wrote letters to well-known domestic universities such as Peking University and Tsinghua University. For example, Duan Xuefu, Su Buqing, Hua Luogeng and others received many letters in this regard.

Foreign professors hope to share their knowledge and experience in education and send students to study with each other.

However, these foreign professors did not receive a reply, because at that time in 1978, everyone was still very cautious.

After listening for a while, Wang Duoyu was interrupted by Hua Luogeng who suddenly appeared in front of him.

"Xiao Wang, did you submit a paper titled "Proof of the Four-Dimensional Poincaré Conjecture: The Compact Four-Dimensional Manifold of a Four-Dimensional Sphere is Topologically Equivalent to the Four-Dimensional Sphere" to Science China Mathematics?

Hua Luogeng's words immediately stunned Su Buqing, Chen Jingrun, Feng Kang and others standing beside him. What was going on?
Duan Xuefu, who originally wanted to say hello to Hua Luogeng, didn't bother to blame Hua for ignoring his old friend. He looked at the former and Wang Duoyu in amazement.

What did he hear?
Proof of the Poincaré conjecture in four dimensions?

Wow, is this young man so fierce?

Why haven't I heard of this young mathematician named Wang before?
"Director Hua, what did you just say? Proof of the four-dimensional Poincaré conjecture? Is this true?"

Su Buqing walked quickly forward, came in front of Hua Luogeng and asked excitedly.

He was the editor-in-chief of the "Acta Mathematica Sinica", but at this time, he did not bother to ask Wang Duoyu why he did not submit this paper to their journal. Instead, he asked about Hua Luogeng's paper on the proof of the Poincare conjecture.

Others may not be familiar with the Poincare conjecture, but as the director of the Department of Mathematics at Fudan University, Su Buqing has been mainly engaged in research in differential geometry, computational geometry, differential geometry of general space, conjugation theory of high-order space, and geometric design, with remarkable results.

It's just that he is too old, he is already 76 years old this year. Fortunately, he is in good health, so he still came to attend the seminar held by the Institute of Mathematics in the second half of this year.

The first half of the year's seminar was held during the National Science Conference in March, and the second half of the year's seminar was held in October.

After the National Science Conference, the spring of our domestic science has arrived and will never go back to the past.

The Poincaré conjecture is a fundamental proposition in topology. Studying it will help humanity better understand three-dimensional space and deepen our understanding of the properties of manifolds. Before the 1960s, few mathematicians attempted to prove the Poincaré conjecture, the most notable of whom were Haken, Moise, and Papachilakopoulos.

It was not until 1960 that Smale, a mathematics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, proved the Poincaré conjecture in five dimensions and above.

Although Su Buqing and his team were unable to contact foreign countries, these foreigners often wrote to them, so Su Buqing and his team were very clear about these things.

As one of the hottest topics in the global mathematics community and also an extremely advanced top-level mathematics topic, I didn’t expect that there would be someone in China who would want to tackle it?

How could Su Buqing not be extremely shocked?
Chen Jingrun, Feng Kang and others came closer, and at this time, Tao Fangqi had also appeared behind Hua Luogeng.

"Yes, it's true. I've read the paper, but I haven't done any detailed analysis, so I can't confirm whether the paper's views are correct."

Hearing Hua Luogeng admit this personally, Su Buqing took a deep breath and looked at Wang Duoyu and said:
"Comrade, could you please give an academic report on your paper?"

When these words came out, Chen Jingrun and others were suddenly shocked, and Hua Luogeng interrupted directly:

"That's definitely not possible. It hasn't been verified yet. We have to be cautious."

Wang Duoyu also echoed:
"Director Hua is right. Let's wait until everyone has read the paper and confirmed that there are no problems before discussing whether to hold a presentation."

In Wang Duoyu's opinion, the report meeting cannot be rushed. The next October, November, and even December are the time for them to review the papers. It will take at least two or three months, or even half a year, before the report meeting can be held.

Otherwise, if he held a report meeting now, few people would be able to understand it and it would be meaningless.

The four-dimensional Poincaré conjecture is an extremely advanced mathematical theory. If it could be proved, it would have been preempted by top foreign mathematicians in the 17 years from 1961 to 1978.

For example, Shing-Tung Yau, Petrovich, Bryant Mumford, Charles Fefman, Daniel and others are all top mathematicians. They are also the winners of the Fields Medal in the past few years. Their strength is unquestionable.

It has not been proven for such a long time, not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t have the ability.

Even Wang Duoyu needed more than half a month to write a paper of such great difficulty.

Although he slacked off during the writing process and also read other journals and books, he definitely put in a lot of effort and hard work to write it.

"Well, I was too excited. I really need time to review the paper."

Su Buqing did not feel embarrassed, but admitted his problem directly, but then he made another request:
"I will also join the review team. When the time comes, our Acta Mathematica Sinica will jointly publish this paper with your Science China Mathematics."

"Haha, Director Su, are you so confident in Xiao Wang?"

(End of this chapter)