Director Feverman said: "The organizing committee asked me to recommend a young mathematician from Princeton to give a conference report, and I think the most suitable person is you, and you will be a good report if you integrate the 'Muller-Shen theorem' and 'Shen's proximity theorem' into one document." ”

"Qi, as for whether you can win the award, then I don't know, maybe you have already been selected for the list of candidates, who knows? This organizing committee operates in the same way as the Oscars, and the list of winners is announced at the last minute. ”

"Okay, I'll prepare the report. Shen Qi accepted Director Fafferman's recommendation, and if there is a prize, he has to fight for it, and he will be awarded a small prize.

The Breakthrough Prize is actually quite a big award, with a single prize of up to $3 million, far exceeding the Nobel Prize and the Philippine Prize, and the winners are generally more prestigious scientists in the academic world.

The Breakthrough Prize comes with a New Horizons Prize, which is awarded to young scholars in the fields of biology, physics, and mathematics, with a single prize of $100,000.

Shen Qi, who never misses Wednesday coffee time, has become the focus of the Department of Mathematics of the University of Mathematics, and among this batch of doctoral students, Shen Qi has done the best, and some young lecturers in the Department of Mathematics have not achieved as good results as Shen Qi.

In the past 20 years, except for Tao Zhexuan, people can no longer name a mathematician trained by Princeton.

Princeton needs a group of young math stars who are just as good as Tao Zhexuan to reinvigorate the math capital.

Math stars must be born in Princeton's training system, and the talents produced by their alma mater are different from those who have been harvested, and those who have made a lot of money and become famous have donated money to their alma mater, and the acceptance speech mentions their alma mater.

Some resources of the Department of Mathematics of the University of Mathematics began to tilt towards Shen Qi, and the international mathematics conferences that he could participate in arranged for Shen Qi to participate, and the awards that could be recommended for evaluation would not be missing Shen Qi's name.

Because the tutorial last semester was so good, Shen Qi was invited to have a meal by the provost this semester, and the provost hoped that Shen Qi could take another semester of tutorials.

Shen Qi is Professor Müller's teaching assistant, and he can also be Professor Müller's research assistant.

Most professors hope that their graduate students can devote more energy to helping them carry out scientific research projects, people are more or less selfish, scientific research projects can produce results, and tutoring undergraduate students is a part of their duties.

There is a hard and fast rule that professors must complete a certain number of hours of undergraduate teaching each semester, and the rest of the class hours are completed by lecturers.

As for the tutorial courses, the teaching assistants are basically in charge, and the University has also hired special tutorial teachers to give lecturer treatment, and especially excellent ones can enjoy the treatment of associate professors.

The arrangement of the tutorial course was taken care of by the academic affairs team, and Shen Qi agreed to the provost's request to bring another semester of tutorial courses.

Shen Qi doesn't have a hard research task now, he likes to deal with energetic young undergraduates, and this semester he has handpicked four undergraduates to join his tutorial class.

The four boys, Applejack, Luca, John, and Stephen, were the four boys that Shen Qi particularly admired, and in the non-Euclidean geometry tutorial class last semester, these four undergraduates had the best grades.

The provost added that eight other undergraduates had joined Shen Qi's tutorial class, and the four boys also had great academic records.

The top 12 undergraduates of the Department of Mathematics formed a "rocket class", and Shen Qi was responsible for tutoring them in two courses, number theory and functional analysis.

"It seems that the Department of Mathematics of the University of Mathematics has realized the crisis, and it really started from the baby. In the past decade or twenty, the "West Coast Mathematics Alliance" formed by Berkeley, UCLA, and Caltech has had a great impact on the Princeton Department of Mathematics.

Before the '90s, the mathematics department of the University of Mathematics could single out the entire western United States.

Today's mathematics department of the general university can only single out California, which is enough to choke.

Berkeley, UCLA, Caltech, and Stanford, if the mathematics departments of these four universities join forces to fight against the mathematics department of the university, the mathematics department of the university is estimated to have to ask for help from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

It's not that the mathematics department of the University has become weaker, but that the competitors have become stronger rapidly.

"Not wanting to forge ahead is equivalent to going backwards. Not being able to come up with an original theory is equivalent to learning mathematics in vain. Shen Qi solemnly admonished his twelve tutorial students.

"Qi, your tone is very similar to that of a professor, only a professor would say that. Lying on his side on the lawn, Stephen said he had never seen an assistant coach so awesome.

As the weather warmed up, Shen Qi arranged for tutorials to be held outdoors on weekend afternoons.

Outdoor academic exchange is a tradition at the University, and outside the Department of Mathematics building is a vast lawn with several detachable blackboards.

The blackboard is about two meters high and four meters wide, and some academic teams have brought chairs with folding tables and gathered in front of the outdoor blackboard for academic discussions.

Some people are tired of sitting on the chair, so they lie on the lawn, how to be comfortable.

With the bright sunshine and free academic atmosphere, no one forces the students of the University to study, but they can't find an excuse not to study, so let's study hard.

"You are already third-year students, and if third-year students can't write papers, it's equivalent to degenerating. "Shen Qi attaches great importance to the political education of students, and those who are politically unqualified are embarrassed to be of great use.

"Odd, what grade was your first paper published?" asked Luca.

"My first math paper was published in my third year of high school, but I didn't actually go to my third year of college, I came to Princeton for graduate school after two years of undergraduate study in China," Shen said. ”

"Qi, the longer I've known you, the more frustrated I've been. Applejack can't sit still in his chair, and he gets up and lies on the lawn, lying on his side next to Stephen with his face facing the blackboard.

Universities in the U.S. typically graduate twice a year, once in the spring in May and once in the fall in December.

Summer school graduations in August are rarer, but there are some of them.

The 12 boys, who all started school in the spring two years ago and are now in third grade, will graduate in the fall next December.

In fact, Shen Qi went to college a year and a half earlier than them, and he was one or two years older.

One of the twelve third-graders from an Arab country dropped out of school for more than a year when he was a child because of the war in his country, and he was seven months older than Shen Qi and was about to turn 23.

Shen Qi is the same age as his twelve tutorial students, and the reason why he can become a tutor and tutor his peers in professional courses is because he is better than his peers.

Princeton's students, on the other hand, are better than their peers at most other schools.

The atmosphere of undergraduate participation in scientific research is very strong, and some undergraduate theses involve research that can only be carried out at the graduate level at other universities in the United States, and undergraduates with excellent grades have the opportunity to have access to cutting-edge equipment used by graduate and doctoral students in other universities.

Some of Princeton's papers published in authoritative academic journals such as Science and Nature are undergraduates.

From the third year, undergraduate students have to participate in thesis projects, and they write papers not to mix up diplomas, but to improve their academic accomplishment.

It is difficult to mix a diploma in the general university, if you can't get some dry goods, you will not be allowed to graduate, when you have a correct attitude, when to graduate.

Shen Qi entered the tutoring session of the professional course: "This semester, I am in charge of your two courses, number theory and functional analysis, if you want to write papers in these two fields, I can provide some professional opinions and suggestions. In my tutorials, I don't advocate that you ask mathematical problems other than number theory and functional analysis, such as topology, partial differential equations, and so on. But if you really want to stretch out, I think I can handle it too. ”

"That is, any question about math that can be asked of you?" Applejack asked.

Shen Qi nodded: "Jack, you can understand it like this. So now, do you have any math questions you'd like to ask?"