Translator: Henyee Translations Editor: Henyee Translations
Annual Mathematics was one of the top four journals in the mathematics world. Any mathematics research institute would subscribe to the journal.
Tao Zhexuan’s office was no exception.
The latest Annual Mathematics issue was sent to his office. He opened the journal catalog and began searching for theses he might be interested in. He marked the theses with a pen for him to read later.
Suddenly, his fingers trembled, and his pen tip rested on a thesis title.
[The Existence of Smooth Solutions of 3D Incompressible Navier-Stokes Equations with Specific Initial Values]
“Navier–Stokes equations?”
Tao Zhexuan looked at the thesis title, and he looked interested.
He hadn’t seen a mathematics thesis about the Navier–Stokes equations in a long time.
After all, even though the Navier–Stokes equations had a wide range of application, it was too difficult to make any pure mathematics thesis-worthy progress on the equations.
Tao Zhexuan was curious. He put down his pen and flipped to the thesis page.
When he saw the author’s name, he was stunned.
Lu Zhou?
He originally planned on reading the theses when he had spare time, but when he saw this name, he couldn’t wait any longer.
He took a blank piece of draft paper from his table and picked up the pen. He then began to meticulously read over the thesis.
Time quickly passed by.
Without him knowing it, it was already noon.
Professor Tao spent the entire morning reading the thesis.
When he put down the journal, he couldn’t help but exclaim.
“Professor Lu really is impressive…”
Although he only briefly read the thesis, he still understood the underlying complexity and connotation of the thesis.
What impressed him the most was that Lu Zhou used a theorem that he had never seen before.
Of course, if he wanted to get a deeper understanding of the thesis, he would have to spend a lot more time reading.
Professor Tao didn’t want to teach his afternoon lecture anymore. He called his assistant and told him to lecture the class instead. He, on the other hand, turned on his laptop.
Like Lu Zhou’s Weibo, this big-name also liked to share his research.
He had a blog.
He blogged about trending events, thesis reviews, and talked about other academia figures.
He also blogged about his own thoughts!
[
… I think this is a very interesting discovery. Not only is the conclusion of the thesis amazing, but the creative theorems he used is also innovative.
I know that he is talented in using many different mathematics tools. I’ve never seen someone involved in more fields of research than him. Not only that, but his ability to understand and apply mathematics is the best I’ve ever seen.
Normally a scholar would be exceptional if they can understand and apply an entire branch of mathematics.
However, Lu Zhou is beyond exceptional.
He’s talented at inventing an entirely new way of thinking, finding ways to apply old methods to new problems, and building completely new theorems.
In my opinion, if he continues to perfect his theorem, he might be able to solve this century-old problem.
Of course, I have to admit, it is not easy!
]
No one knew more about partial differentials than Tao Zhexuan.
In 2014, a Kazakh mathematician, Otelbayev, claimed to have proved the existence of a smooth Navier–Stokes equations solution. This event caused controversy among international mathematicians.
Otelbayev was a well-known mathematician that had a better reputation than Professor Enoch. Therefore, his seemingly outrageous claim wasn’t ignored.
However, reviewing his thesis wasn’t easy.
Perelman, who solved the Poincare conjecture, had an eccentric personality, but thankfully his thesis was written in English. However, Otelbayev wasn’t that good at English, so he wrote his 90-page thesis entirely in Russian.
Tao Zhexuan, who could only speak Cantonese and English, didn’t understand Russian. However, that didn’t stop him.
According to Mr. Otelbayev’s thesis, Tao Zhexuan used his idea and constructed a similar Navier–Stokes equations structure. Therefore, if Tao Zhexuan’s thesis was proven to be correct, then there would be no doubt that Otelbayev’s idea was also correct.
Then, something even nuttier happened.
By setting a special initial value, Otelbayev proved that a smooth solution corresponding to that value would lose its regularity across time. This was equivalent to a contradiction proof by finding a counterexample.
This meant that the idea itself was wrong.
His counterexample was recognized by many partial differential scholars.
Soon after, a Russian mathematician at the University of Oxford, Professor Gregory Selegin, finally reviewed Otelbayev’s thesis. He pointed out six errors in Otelbayev’s thesis and ended the controversy.
Of course, Otelbayev also acknowledged the mistakes himself.
All in all, Professor Tao was quite well-versed in the Navier–Stokes equations.
He rarely posted academic content on his blogs, and any information he posted on his blogs was verified by himself.
Actually, it wasn’t just Tao Zhexuan that gave a high rating for this thesis, many other big names in the partial differential equations field also gave a similar review.
For example, Professor Fefferman, the head of the mathematics department at Princeton, basically had the same opinion as Tao Zhexuan. He believed that the method used by Lu Zhou was more important than the conclusion of the thesis itself.
It didn’t matter if there really was a “smooth solution of the three-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations”, what mattered was the inspiration that Lu Zhou’s mathematics method could bring.
Lu Zhou was previously immersed in fields like materials science and chemistry, whereas many scholars thought that it was a mistake to concentrate on other fields in Lu Zhou’s prime years.
After solving the Goldbach’s conjecture, Lu Zhou went silent for more than a year. He hadn’t published a mathematics thesis since then, and some people even thought that this genius was bored of mathematics.
However, it seemed that wasn’t the case now.
This genius didn’t give up on mathematics research.
Instead…
He was playing the long game?