A week has passed since Lu Zhou put his paper on the arxiv website, and most of the people who pay attention to the Goldbach conjecture have already heard the news. Follow? Dream?. lā

For the 50-page paper, some people were amazed by the "group construction method", some people expressed disbelief, and some people disdained the 50-page paper, because it is indeed not easy to understand the entire proof process.

Except for those who are proficient in the "Two Rituals, Four Images, Five Elements and Eight Trigrams" method, many scholars in the direction of analytic number theory rarely understand more than two methods at the same time, even if they study Goldbach's conjecture.

For example, people who study the large sieve method may not be proficient in the circle method, and vice versa. In addition to the mainstream choices, there are also some methods such as the density method and the trigonometric sum, which are even more unpopular.

In the group theory method used by Lu Zhou, you can not only see the shadow of the sieve method, but also see the circle method, and even the idea of group theory, which covers a wide range.

It is precisely for this reason that there is a certain threshold for understanding the paper, not to mention testing the correctness of the paper.

Of course, the general view in the number theory community is still relatively optimistic, after all, Lu Zhou has won the Kohl Number Theory Award, and has solved many problems in number theory, especially in the direction of prime numbers.

Because many professors mentioned this matter in their lectures, the discussion gradually spread from the academic circle to some campus BBS.

Now not only scholars who are concerned about this direction are talking about this matter, but even students of mathematics departments in major universities are also talking about this paper.

At a foreign mathematics forum famous for predicting the Philippine Prize, a discussion began because of this.

【ok！ I know he's solved the twin prime conjecture and the Polignac conjecture, but our professor said in class that the Goldbach conjecture is not at the same level as them. It's like the Ivy League league and the Super Bowl, although it's both rugby, it's not a heavyweight at all. To put it bluntly, I don't believe that his thesis is correct, there must be something wrong, and it is estimated that it will not be long before it will be overturned. 】

So who are your professors? 】

[James Maynard!] 14-year Sastra Ramanujan Award winner! Candidates for the Fields Medal in '18! I think his opinion is quite authoritative. 】

[Oh, that Maynard, I've heard, seems to be the Englishman who studied prime spacing?] I heard that after Zhang Yitang calculated 70 million, he has been challenging the twin prime conjecture, and he has been preparing for a whole year, but he was won by others, and he burned all the manuscripts in anger? (laughs)】

[Hehe! 】

[Contrary to your point of view, our professor has a high opinion of this paper, believing that the group construction method in it will be a very promising analytic number theory research tool.] 】

[Oh? Who are you professors? IMHO, not everyone has the ability to review analytic number theory, especially in the field of prime numbers. 】

[Tao Zhexuan. 】

【……】

……

There is no peer review on ARXIV, and the correctness of the paper is uncertain, and there is a lot of debate about whether this mathematical puzzle has been proven.

However, everyone knows that the mathematical community will not let this dazzling research wait too long.

Just two weeks after Lu Zhou uploaded his paper, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton updated a meeting information on its official website.

Next Monday, Lu Zhou will give a one-hour presentation on the Goldbach conjecture proof in Lecture Hall 1 at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

As soon as this announcement came out, all the debate about the correctness of the paper turned into a discussion of the report itself.

Many people's doubts about the correctness of the paper are mainly due to the lack of understanding of the group construction method and the lack of peer review of the articles on ARXIV. If it's in the form of a presentation, and it's in a place like the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, there is no doubt that a lot of questions will be addressed in the Q&A session.

It is precisely because of this that Lu Zhou has been preparing very seriously in the past few days, and he has not taken it lightly because of the recognition from the system.

The key to a mathematical conjecture being proven to be logically self-consistent, but in the final analysis, it still needs to be recognized by peers. This is fundamentally different from subject tests, and there is no one standard answer that can be tested. As a claimant of proof conjectures, he is obliged to explain his theory and answer all doubts.

Even if it is a tiny detail, Lu Zhou does not dare to let go easily, and many traps are often hidden in some "obvious" problems.

Not to mention him, Wiles, who proved Fermat's Great Theorem, has been tricked into these small problems, and has been stuck in a "obvious" but problematic place for almost a year. If it weren't for the encouragement of friends, he even planned to admit defeat at one point.

When completing this work, Lu Zhou couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

He didn't feel it before, but now he realizes how useful it is to bring a student.

If you want to go on stage to make a report, you will first throw it to the students as the test center and take it back to read it, and draw all the things that you don't understand, and basically it will be carried out by your peers, and it will be obvious if you make it difficult.

It's a pity that although Professor Deligne borrowed a doctoral student he brought with him as a staff officer, it was not the theoretical aspect that helped him to work as a staff officer, but only a matter on the staff PPT.

Even if Lu Zhou wanted to ask him where he couldn't read his paper, he just looked confused and couldn't understand it at all.

Because his research direction is algebraic geometry, as for the big sieve method, the circle method, he doesn't know anything at all......

……

Time passed day by day, and finally the day before the briefing meeting.

With the influx of a group of mathematicians, even the quiet town of Princeton is lively.

When it comes to hosting mathematicians from all over the world, Princeton can be said to have taken great care of it.

According to the arrangement of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the mathematicians invited to the symposium were arranged at the Princeton Hotel across the street from Palmer Square.

If all goes well, it's not just an academic conference during the day, but also a celebration feast full of champagne and food in the evening.

However, Lu Zhou has no leisure to think about these issues for the time being, because for him, every minute and every second before the start of the report is precious.

The next afternoon, the lecture hall No. 1 of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton was crowded.

In addition to the academics invited to the conference, there were also some uninvited students. Some of them came with their mentors, some studied at Princeton, and some even drove from New York and Philadelphia next door.

Although they were not notified of the specific time of the meeting, some of the people who had been waiting here early still took advantage of the chaos to grab their seats.

As for those who came late, some simply sat on the floor in the aisles on either side of their seats, and some even stood in the corners and outside the corridors to stand with the reporters who rushed to hear the news.

The presentation will start at 2 p.m. and end at 3 p.m., and may be extended depending on the number of questions asked and the content of the questions.

If nothing else, after this presentation, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, in conjunction with the editorial office of the Annals of Mathematics, will organize a four- to six-member jury to synthesize the minutes of the meeting to independently review Lu Zhou's paper at the same time, and finally summarize the reviewers' opinions to decide whether his paper will pass or not.

It can be said that whether the manuscript of this paper goes smoothly depends on whether he can explain his group structure method clearly.

Standing behind the curtain in the lecture hall, Lu Zhou glanced at the time on the phone screen again and took a deep breath.

There are five minutes left.

This is the tenth time he has taken out his phone to check the time.

As for the first few deep breaths to adjust his heart rate, he couldn't remember it anymore.

Prior to this, Lu Zhou had learned from Professor Deligne about the number of people attending the meeting.

Regardless of those who signed up on their own, there were more than 150 well-known scholars invited to attend, including some from Paris, some from Germany, some from his home country, and some familiar faces.

In addition to people in the world of mathematics, there are also journalists from media from all over the world.

Soon, he will stand in front of the eyes of the world and put an end to the problem of the century.

At this moment, a staff member of the Institute for Advanced Study pushed the door and walked into the preparation room, and said to Lu Zhou in a respectful voice.

"Mr. Lu, the time is almost up, are you ready?"

There was no immediate answer to this question.

Lu Zhou turned to look at the mirror and reached out to straighten the tie on his chest.

Taking a deep breath at the end, he faced himself in the mirror, a smile on his lips.

"Ready."