Chapter 280: Days in Princeton (18)
“… Behind everyone's success, there will always be a person who is full of expectations for you, because their existence will always remind you that there are some such people when you are idle, and they are people you must not let down. - From The Complete Biography of Jun Xin, Vol. 7, Princeton.
Leaving Professor Feverman's office, Junxin did not rush to the laboratory or to the library as usual, but a very rare person came to the river near the library slowly, found a stone, casually brushed off the dust on the surface, and then sat down quietly, a rare start.
It is certainly a gratifying thing to be expected by others, but if the person who is looking forward to it is too high, in addition to joy, there is even more endless pressure.
Junxin doesn't care how much pressure there is, in fact, he has never bothered to care about the pressure imposed on him by the outside world, his original wish was to do his own research quietly, and then establish his own school like Gauss and Bohr. But at the end of the day, it's just a thought in my heart, and I've never mentioned it to anyone.
This is enough to see Junxin's cautious attitude towards major events, unwilling to live too empty, and some not thinking about things that have not happened, which is probably the characteristic of every pragmatic scientist. It's like when Einstein was studying the theory of relativity, he never thought about whether he would become the head of the theoretical physics community in the future, and they only stayed on their own research when they thought about the future.
But what Junxin is facing now is a bit unexpected. Although Professor Feverman did not say anything explicitly, it can be seen from his final conversation that his expectations for Junxin are very high, so high that Junxin himself is a little incredulous.
In the minds of Feverman's professors, Fermat's theorem should be a mathematical pinnacle that people like them have pursued all their lives, but such a mathematical pinnacle is not the pinnacle of Junxin, at best it is just a temporary height of Junxin on the road of mathematical research. Junxin should have a higher height.
What kind of person Professor Feverman is, as a student from Princeton University, is naturally very clear. Professor Feverman can be called a generation of mathematicians, especially in algebra, which has indeed reached the highest peak in the world. He was the youngest mathematician in mathematics to win a Fields Medal until 2014, at the age of twenty-six.
For many, or for many mathematicians, the Fields Medal was the most important honor of their lives, but it was taken away by Professor Feverman at the age of twenty-six, which is enough to see his ability. However, a real master of mathematics who is now busy tells him that his future should not stop at the problems he has been chasing all his life, but should be placed on a higher foundation. This kind of information is a little cloudy even for Junxin, although in Professor Feverman's office, Junxin behaves normally, but after it comes out, his brain has been in a state of fog, otherwise he would not have fallen into a rare state of daze at this time.
Scientists have always been extremely cautious about problems that they cannot explain, but for some more serious scientists, after the occurrence of phenomena that exceed the natural sciences that can be explained, they often become unconfident about what they have learned.
So all along, although Junxin has achieved extremely good results in various disciplines, although these results are not their own things many times, but this also brings some comfort to themselves, so that they feel a little comforted in their hearts, so as to alleviate their lack of confidence in the knowledge they have learned.
And what caused all this is a crossing that I still can't explain until now.
Unlike the protagonists of other novels, who give the explanation of the phenomenon of crossing to the so-called gods, Junxin is more likely to look for the problem of his own crossing from the knowledge he has learned. That's why he's so fascinated by superstring theory.
Throughout Junxin's life, including the past and present lives, the interpretation of time and space is nothing more than Einstein's theory of relativity and the superstring theory that integrates relativity and quantum mechanics. Jun Xin has not not considered other extended theories of unified field theory or relativistic space-time view, but compared with the mainstream view, it is nothing more than a little more credible superstring theory, which is the real reason why he spares no effort to promote the research of superstring theory.
However, while not solving his own problems, Junxin's self-confidence in himself is still there, although it has not been specifically manifested, but he himself does not realize that this feeling of unconfidence is actually deep in his heart, the simplest example is that so far, in all the research he has done, none of them can be regarded as truly his own research. Subconsciously, Junxin did not think that he could have other directions to go, and unconsciously developed in the original direction of history.
Perhaps if it weren't for Professor Feverman's expectations for himself, Junxin would have fallen into such a complacent situation unexpectedly. In such a state of mind, even if Junxin can realize his original dream and establish a school that is not inferior to the Göttingen School and the Copenhagen School, it is just a thing like a mirror, and the things in the subconscious still cannot be eliminated, and life will always be tormented by this unconfident panic until he finally loses his original self.
Junxin knows that he is not a professional biologist, and it is difficult to understand such things as time and space without or all his life. After all, I am a physicist, even if I am studying mathematics now, but this does not change the fact that I am a physicist. Time and space are things that physicists must understand, and when they encounter supernatural things that can no longer be explained, Junxin subconsciously avoided them, as evidenced by the fact that he did not enroll in the physics department when he was in college.
Professor Feverman didn't know the fact that Junxin was a time-traveler, he just noticed as a professor that a teenage young scientist could grow into a giant in the mathematical world, so he gave his own appreciation and expectations. And this kind of expectation and appreciation allowed Junxin to expose the long-hidden meaning, and let him have more understanding.
In this world, no one is higher than his own height, just as a random physicist is better than Newton in the past. If you say that you used to throw out what you know more and let everyone study it together, and finally hope that people will have new theories to explain the doubts in your heart. Now, under the unconscious reminder of Professor Feverman, Junxin enters the research more as a participant and a person to be kept, and the concept generated is the real secret of time and space that he has studied.
Thinking of this, Junxin's eyes exuded a different light, and the kind of confident light that was different from the past.