Chapter 198 A problem that needs to be solved for a lifetime
After staying in his hometown for a few days, Xu Chuan discovered that there was another thing in the world that was more tiring than academic research.
That is the exchange of favors.
I don’t know who leaked the news. Ever since he came back, people have come to visit him every day.
At first, they were neighbors in the village. They heard that the great scientist who appeared on the news network was back, so they came over to have a look. While chatting, they asked him for his learning experience and to see if their children could also get into a good university.
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Then the school teachers, principal and others came to visit with gifts, and then the county, city and other local leaders came to express their condolences and invited him to give a report, give a speech, give out an award, etc.
Although Xu Chuan was not very resistant to things like human relations, he was overwhelmed by the waves of guests coming over.
A year is more difficult than studying mathematical conjectures wholeheartedly.
...
After spending the twelfth day of the New Year at home as usual, Xu Chuan bought a ticket and returned to Princeton.
In early February, at his request, four students who had received his admission notice rushed to the school from all over the world.
Allowing students who originally enrolled in the fall to enroll in the spring is a very troublesome matter that involves many aspects.
Such as student visas, school status, check-in arrangements and other matters.
But for Xu Chuan, these things are not a problem.
Princeton just needs to change the admission period to spring. For dormitories and so on, can't a full professor still apply for four dormitories?
As for whether students can solve their own problems, that is their own business.
Theoretically, if you apply for admission to the fall semester, some students may not graduate from their original school in January or February.
It would be fine if you were an exchange student, but it would be troublesome if you were an international student.
But Xu Chuan doesn't care about this.
He assigns tasks, and how the students complete them is their own business.
The relationship between the doctoral supervisor and the doctoral student is very similar to that in the workplace. The doctoral supervisor is the boss and the doctoral student is the wage earner.
Even if you are on vacation with your girlfriend and your tutor calls you, you still have to come over and work as a coolie moving bricks.
Compared with the workplace, what is slightly better is that your doctoral supervisor will give you some help and guidance in your academic career.
When he leads you to work, he will pass on some knowledge and experience. If you have anything you don't understand, you can ask him. The instructor is obliged to answer. This is more similar to a 'manager' or an 'old man' at work.
Of course, the premise is that your tutor is a normal tutor.
If you meet that kind of unscrupulous mentor, it can be said to be worse than the workplace.
Don't even think about help or anything like that. It won't stop you from graduating, and you'll be lucky if I let you work for a few more years for free.
In the United States, for doctoral students, the supervisor's rights are even more amazing. If the supervisor is not satisfied, he can expel the student.
Of course, this is generally not done.
After all, after you expel students, it will be more difficult to recruit students later. The students who apply to you have to consider whether they can graduate from you, right?
...
According to Xu Chuan's request, four students came to Princeton in February.
The first person to go to Princeton was Gu Bing from Jiaotong University in China.
He even arrived earlier than Xu Chuan. Xu Chuan only returned to Princeton after celebrating the 12th day of the New Year in his hometown, but he had already set off on the fourth day of the lunar calendar.
Gu Bing, who had stayed in the hotel for more than ten days, was always excited and anxious.
The tutor is a top math expert who has proved the seven millennium problems. He had never thought about it before.
I submitted my resume with the intention of giving it a try, but in fact I didn’t have much hope.
After all, he knew only too well how competitive there would be among such mentors and professors.
He had applied to many foreign colleges and universities with good mathematics majors before, but he basically failed due to reasons such as speaking skills and being easily nervous.
If it doesn't work this time, he will probably turn to submitting his resume to a slightly lower-end university.
Who would have thought that in such a twist of events, the resume I submitted with the mentality of giving it a try would be selected instead.
It's like a dream.
No, I can't even dream of such a dream!
So after receiving the fantastic notification, he celebrated for two days and quickly took care of all the domestic affairs. He didn't even leave his relatives for the New Year. He took the time to set off after the New Year.
I don’t ask for anything else, I just want to leave a good impression in front of the instructor as soon as possible.
After staying in the hotel for ten days, he finally received a message from Xu Chuan asking when he would arrive.
After receiving the message, he immediately appeared in front of this mentor who was several years younger than him.
Seeing Gu Bing standing in front of him, Xu Chuan was stunned for a moment and asked, "When did you come here?"
Gu Bing touched his sparse hair and said with a smile: "I'm afraid of wasting your time, so I left on the fourth day of the Lunar New Year."
It has to be said that this wave of favorability has indeed touched Xu Chuan's heart. After all, what boss wouldn't like a sensible and obedient employee who can work overtime on his own initiative?
He nodded and said, "Have you brought any information or anything? If so, I will take you to go through the admission procedures."
Hearing this, Gu Bing nodded quickly: "I brought it with me, it's all in my schoolbag."
...
After taking Gu Bing to complete the admission procedures and letting him familiarize himself with the environment, Xu Chuan returned to his office.
He has to prepare these students' study arrangements and their big classes at Princeton.
It is the most basic obligation to perform what kind of responsibilities you have in whatever position you hold.
As a professor, he naturally has to teach his students well.
In fact, these things should have been thought of during the Chinese New Year, but at that time, the interpersonal relationships made him exhausted. During the Chinese New Year, he was also thinking about his next arrangements.
In essence, compared to his identity as a Princeton professor, his more basic and important identity is that of a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Study.
As a researcher, conducting your own scientific research is the most important thing.
Therefore, the focus of his thinking during the Chinese New Year has always been on his next arrangements.
As for students and teaching classes, based on his experience as a professor in his previous life, it was not a big deal and he could handle it casually.
However, the next arrangements really need to be carefully considered.
In two years at Princeton, Hodge's conjecture was solved, something Xu Chuan had not thought of, which disrupted his study schedule.
When he first went to Princeton, he went there with a learning mentality, and did not expect that he could break through such top-level problems in a short period of time.
However, this also allowed him to see that his talent in mathematics is not weaker than that in physics.
After all, problem solving itself is an important means of learning. It can apply the knowledge you have learned and integrate it into a whole.
Being able to solve the Hodge conjecture in two years, and being able to build a bridge in the three fields of algebraic geometry, analysis, and topology, even with the help of mathematical knowledge from a previous life, can be said to be extraordinary.
Considering that he will stay at Princeton for another year and a half, Xu Chuan does not want to be left in the United States, so he will not be able to touch application-related science in the next time.
Although I don’t know why the other party hasn’t contacted me yet, what is certain is that he is now on the list of the US Immigration Bureau.
Perhaps it is the huge difference between the field of pure theoretical science and the field of applied science.
All results of the former are public and can be viewed publicly by every country, and it often takes an extremely long time to transform purely theoretical science into practical technology.
Each of the latter, talents in the field of applied sciences, can create immense value for a country.
Qian Lao, who returned to China a few years ago, is a top genius in the field of applied science. After returning to China, the changes he brought to China can be seen by everyone, and they are extremely huge.
In his previous life, he was locked up in the United States because he participated in the application and development of nuclear energy physics.
Considering this aspect, Xu Chuan set his sights on the purely theoretical fields of mathematics and physics.
In addition, he may only have a few months at Princeton, so he set his sights on the two major systems of manifolds and chaos.
The former, broadly speaking, is the intersection of mathematics and physics.
Manifolds have been developed to their extreme in mathematics and are the Navier-Stokes equations in the Seven Millennium Problems.
This aspect relates to his ultimate goal of coming to Princeton - 'turbulence control in controllable nuclear fusion'.
In the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, scholars such as Mathematics Professor Fehrman and Physics Professor Duncan Haldane are among the top professors on manifolds.
If he couldn't bring back some knowledge in the field of manifolds from Princeton, he would be unwilling to do so.
So he set his first target on the manifold field.
In fact, there was something else he wanted to learn at Princeton.
That's 'fluid mechanics'.
He really wanted to have in-depth exchanges with physics professors in this area at Princeton to learn more about this area of knowledge, but after much thought, he finally gave up the idea.
Otherwise, although fluid mechanics is the basic knowledge of physics, this direction has strong application properties and is the foundation of many industries.
The study of fluid mechanics not only plays an important role in the development of the entire science, but also plays an indispensable role in many industries and projects related to the national economy and people's livelihood.
It has both the nature of a basic subject and strong application. It is an important part of engineering science or technical science.
The most prominent example is the aerospace industry. It is no exaggeration to say that without the development of fluid mechanics, there would be no aerospace technology today.
For example, if you are sitting on a Boeing 747 aircraft, consider that there are more than 400 people sitting in it, the total weight is more than 300 tons, and the total length and width are more than half a football field. It is lighter than a feather.
Supported by air, this is an achievement of fluid mechanics that no one can help but marvel at.
So after thinking about it for a while, he finally gave up on this idea and chose only theoretical manifolds instead of fluids with applied properties.
As for chaos mathematics, it is a further in-depth study based on his previous mathematics.
It is a new mathematics developed on measure theory, probability theory, random process, dynamic system, and fractal theory.
The main purpose is to see how unpredictability can be reconciled with determinism.
In the simplest terms, chaos mathematics is actually the study of the 'butterfly effect'.
The goal is to make the butterfly effect work for you. Small changes in initial conditions produce large changes in subsequent behavior, which can be an advantage; all you have to do is make sure you get the big changes you want.
This aspect is not only related to mathematics, but also to physics. It can even play a role in the control of high-temperature plasma turbulence in controllable nuclear fusion.
If he can bring some of these two aspects of knowledge back to China from Princeton, Xu Chuan believes that his future research on controllable nuclear fusion will be improved a lot.
As for solving the problem of controllable nuclear fusion, he actually has no confidence even if he is reborn.
Even though he had stood at the pinnacle of this field in his previous life and advanced it a lot, he still had no certainty.
Because there are so many problems to solve.
Superconducting materials are a piece of the puzzle in controllable nuclear fusion, as is the problem of turbulence, and tritium self-sustainability is also a piece of the puzzle...
And as it progresses, no one knows how many more such problems there will be.
Xu Chuan never thought that he would be able to solve the problem of controllable nuclear fusion immediately after returning from Princeton. That was just an idiot's dream, and he might not be able to do it even in another life, let alone another life.
As the ultimate energy source in human dreams, if it were so easy to solve, it would have been solved long ago.
This chapter is not over yet, please click on the next page to continue reading! Anyway, he is ready to spend his whole life mastering this technology.
As for whether it can be done in the end, apart from hard work, God will decide the rest.
.......
In the office, Xu Chuan took out a brand new notebook from the drawer after pondering for a while.
It is impossible for him to teach the four students in the same way and lead them to the same field.
At least, a good tutor would not do this. This is not the way to lead students.
Of course, this can be done before graduate school, but not after graduate school.
Especially for doctoral students, because for doctoral students, everyone’s previous learning direction and focus are different, and their subsequent development will naturally be different.
In addition, what these students have to do at the doctoral stage is not only to learn knowledge in depth, but also to create knowledge in the field of their own study.
Therefore, he had to make a general arrangement for the application of these four students. As for the specific direction, he needed to wait until they were all here before communicating.
However, although everyone's learning direction is slightly different, the overall goal is still the same.
And he also has a pretty suitable target on his hands.
"Algebraic variety and group mapping tools!"
Yes, it was the mathematical tool he used to prove the Hodge conjecture.
This tool is quite suitable for these four students to learn.
Whether it is Gu Bing and the other three who were selected to study pure mathematics, or Amelia, who was recruited later to study mathematical physics, they can all learn this set of mathematical tools in depth.
It is a tool that communicates in the three fields of algebraic geometry, topology, and analysis. Needless to say, in the field of mathematics, in mathematical physics, topology and analysis are also very important mathematical tools.
So even if Amelia studied mathematical physics, she would not have any problems when facing this set of mathematical tools.