In mathematics, or in most of the scientific community, the majority of the top prize winners are still almost exclusively men, and this is the current reality.

However, mathematics is more rigorous in this area than in other fields.

Several awards in the field of mathematics, such as the Fields Medal, the Albert Prize, the Wolf Prize, the Cafford Prize, the Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences, and the Breakthrough Award in Mathematics..... and other world-class top awards, and the only one that women have won is the Fields Medal.

Several of the others, to date, have not been awarded to women.

This may have something to do with the fact that the mathematical community is particularly keen on "meritocracy" and wants to avoid the "stigma" associated with measures such as quotas.

Of course, it's not just math.

Many prestigious scientific awards are likewise facing this problem.

Some award organizers are trying to increase the diversity of nominees and decision-making committees. But in a consensus-oriented group that isn't used to rapid change, it's hard to change that.

In mathematics, in particular, progress has been frustratingly slow.

Professor Maryam Mirzahani from Yin Lang is the only woman to have won the Fields Medal so far.

Three years earlier, in 2014, she had won the Fields Medal for her work on curved symmetry. In one fell swoop, it broke the embarrassing situation that there were no women in the Fields Medal.

But today, the top female mathematician has passed away forever from breast cancer.

Hearing the news, Xu Chuan was stunned for a moment.

Why doesn't he have any impression of the death of a Fields Medalist and the only female winner?

But then, he reacted, shook his head slightly and sighed.

He was wrong, it's 2017, and if he hadn't been reborn, he would still be a sophomore at NTU.

At that time, he didn't have much contact with mathematics at all, and there was no one in the physics department to discuss it.

By the time he went to Princeton to study with Witten and began to get into mathematics, Professor Mariam Mirzahani had been dead for several years, and there was little mention of it.

But speaking of which, this Professor Maryam Mirzahani still has a little 'relationship' with him.

At that time, he had just entered Princeton, and there was a girl from Paxia Miris, who seemed to have studied under Professor Mariam Mirzahani.

At that time, she also recruited him for her former mentor and wanted to invite him to study at Stanford University, but he directly refused.

"That's really true."

Xu Chuan shook his head and sighed slightly in his heart.

If he had an impression of it, he would have remembered it when he was first recruited.

Then he would have vaguely mentioned this to Professor Mirzahani, and asked Professor Maryam Mirzakhani to have his body checked.

Although breast cancer cannot be guaranteed to be 100% cured, the current clinical cure rate is still very high, and patients can achieve better treatment results if they are diagnosed and treated early.

It's a pity that such a genius mathematician.

If only he had been able to step into the world of mathematics in his last life, and learn the cause and news of Professor Mirzahani's death earlier, he might have been able to save a great mathematician in this life.

However, this incident also gave Xu Chuan a wake-up call, and he tried hard to recall whether there were relatives and friends in his memory and whether they would be sick in the future.

Thinking about it this time, it really reminded him of another thing.

When he was in his thirties in his previous life, he received a call from his parents, saying that his uncle seemed to have died of lung cancer, and asked if he could rush back.

It's just that at that time, he was already trapped in the United States and couldn't rush home at all.

He hadn't heard anything else about it other than that.

"It should be too late."

Xu Chuan thought about it, and the sorrow in his heart also let go of it a little: "In the future, let your parents, relatives and friends go for a physical examination every year, spending some money is nothing, and ensuring good health is the most important thing." ”

.......

The death of Professor Mariam Mirzahani is a big deal for the mathematical community.

After all, she was the first female Fields Medal winner in history, and her death is a heavy mourning for the mathematical community.

Xu Chuan followed her mentor, Professor Deligne, to attend her funeral and express his respect.

Professor Mirzahani, who was sunk in an ice coffin, had short black hair, and except for his slightly pale face, he seemed to be asleep.

Walking around the ice coffin, Xu Chuan retreated, looked at the blue sky in the distance, and sighed in his heart.

A 40-year-old Fields Medal winner, although she has passed the golden age of her academic career, is only halfway through her life, and there is still a long way to go to bloom in the future.

But now, less than a small square meter will seal all of her.

This reminded Xu Chuan of his previous life, almost the same age and the same future, but fortunately, he could do it all over again.

......

After sending off Professor Mirzahani, Xu Chuan was about to leave when a young girl found him.

"Are you Mr. Xu Chuan?"

"It's me, may I ask who you are?"

Xu Chuan nodded, looking at the girl who stopped him with some confusion.

"Hello, Mr. Xu Chuan, my name is Mesfield Gwen, and I am a student of Professor Maryam Mirzahani."

Like Professor Mirzahani, the girl with short hair and some heroic posture stretched out her hand to Xu Chuan.

"Hello, Miss Gwen, please mourn." Xu Chuan stretched out his hand and shook it lightly, and then said, "Is there anything wrong with me?" ”

"Thank you very much for attending the teacher's funeral, here is a letter that the teacher asked me to give to you." Masfield Gwen handed over a letter that was not very thick and handed it to Xu Chuan.

Xu Chuan was very surprised, looked at Mayfield Gwen and asked suspiciously, "Are you sure it was given to me?" ”

Masfield Gwen nodded and said, "If there is no other person named Xu Chuan who proves Weyl-Berry's conjecture, it is you." ”

Xu Chuan pinched the letter and was a little confused for a while.

He did not remember what he had to do with Professor Maryam Mirzahani.

The two had only met once, at the Princeton meeting, and they hadn't even been able to talk a few words, why did Professor Mirzahani leave a letter to him?

But this will not be the time to study this, after confirming that the other party did not give it to the wrong person, Xu Chuan put the letter in his hand and thanked: "Sorry for your trouble." ”

"It's my business, I'll go first, the teacher leaves, I still have a lot of things to deal with." Masfield Gwen bent slightly, then turned away.

As for Xu Chuan, he returned to the hotel with letters and doubts.

Curiously opened the letter, which contained two documents.

The most superficial is a letter, written on standard stationery, only two thin sheets, and the next stack, Xu Chuan glanced at it roughly, it seems to be manuscript paper?

Eyes returned to the letter, Xu Chuan looked.

"Hello, Xu."

"I'm glad you received this letter, but I should have been dead when you read it."

"I regretted not seeing your report in person at last year's Princeton conference, but after watching the video of your report, I learned a lot."

"The weakened form proof of the Weyl-Berry conjecture and your report on the Weyl-Berry conjecture on the Princeton stage are excellent......."

"........, to make a long story short, the reason I am leaving you this letter is that in your papers and reports, I have seen some new methods and knowledge, recorded them, and organized them partially, and I have given them to you in the letter. Hope they can give you some help. ”

"Unfortunately, when I was doing these things, I found out that my breast cancer was in an advanced stage, and I didn't have much time left, otherwise I could have done it better."

"I heard that you extended the application of the xu-weyl-berry theorem to the field of astronomy, but unfortunately I am undergoing chemotherapy and don't have much energy to read those papers."

"But I believe ......"

“.......”

"Forget it, that's all for it, if you keep nagging, I'm afraid you'll really become an old woman, I hope you don't mind. Hopefully, those things on the manuscript paper will help you a little. ”

[Maryam Mirzahani.] 】

After reading the letter left to him by Professor Maryam Mirzahani, Xu Chuan sat there for a long time without moving.

After a long time, he finally raised his head and let out a long breath of turbid air in his chest.

It was too late to say anything, and I only hoped that he would gain enough knowledge from the manuscript paper left by Professor Mirzahani to fulfill her last wishes and hopes.

Carefully folded the letter, Xu Chuan picked up the manuscript paper and looked at it seriously.

A Fields Medalist deliberately left behind a manuscript on her deathbed, which contains the work she did not complete during her lifetime, and deserves to be treated with caution by anyone.

Starting from the first page, Xu Chuan sat in the hotel room for more than five hours, and it was not until late at night that he finished reading the dozens of pages of manuscript paper.

Getting up and moving his body, he let out a long sigh of relief and sat down again.

These manuscripts are worthy of being left behind by a Fields Medal winner.

The knowledge in it spans from the study of magnitude from Tahimmiller's theory and hyperbolic geometry to ergodic theory and the popularity of symplectic geometry, to the topological non-banality of counting functions and the berry phase, and the curvature of the berry...... Spanning several areas of mathematics.

Moreover, the research in each field of mathematics is quite profound, and basically belongs to the most cutting-edge knowledge in the current field.

Even he, after only reading it once in a short period of time, did not dare to say that he fully understood all the knowledge points.

But the general situation, Xu Chuan has already done it in his heart.

The route taken by Professor Mirzahani is somewhat similar to the mathematics he had previously talked to Professor Artur Avila.

Take advantage of domain expansion to convert functions into subgroups and establish connections with intermediate domains and collections, and then generalize them.

However, he and Professor Artur Ávila were talking about some of the problems that would lead him to the Langlands program, such as some of the conjectures derived from the self-defending l function.

Professor Mirzahani, on the other hand, pushed it to the upper cohomology class of algebraic closed-chain, and tried to infiltrate algebraic geometry in this way.

This may have something to do with Professor Mirzahani's previous field of research, after all, her field of research was in the area of algebraic geometry.

I have to say that this is a rather ingenious way of thinking.

The only female Fields Medal winner ever, she has more insights and inspiration in mathematics than the world knows.

"Such a math genius..... Alas~"

In front of the desk, Xu Chuan sighed and carefully stored the manuscript paper and documents on the desk.

Then I got up and went to wash up and go to bed.

Tomorrow he will return to Princeton, and he will study these things.

......

Seeing him off, Xu Chuan followed Deligne back to Princeton.

When he returned, however, he asked Professor Deligne for a week's leave, not to go out to play, but to devote himself to sorting out the manuscript paper that Professor Mirzahani had left him.

After all, although there is a wealth of knowledge on it, it is all Professor Mirzahani's essay manuscript and some ideas, as well as some unfinished things.

He needs to systematically sort out these things and then study them in depth.

Professor Drinne had no opinion on his request for leave, nor did he ask him what he was going to do.

Even if he asks for leave to play, he will agree.

If it weren't for the fact that Princeton didn't have this habit of tutors taking the initiative to give students vacations, Deligne would have wanted to give Xu Chuan a vacation a long time ago.

Not to mention the study in the past two months, it can't be counted as a delay of several months, just in the first half of this year, from February to May, he really saw the madness of this student.

Twenty-four hours a day, more than fourteen hours were spent studying, and he and Edward Witten combined had barely enough energy to satisfy him.

Deligne wondered if he continued like this, would he have nothing to teach him in another year and a half?

No way, this student's speed of understanding and absorption of knowledge is too fast.

Moreover, the diligence makes people want to cry.

Deligne thinks that he was diligent enough in his studies when he was younger, but his diligence can be said to be nothing by comparison.

I don't go to parties, I don't travel, and I'm not interested in electronic entertainment....... In addition to eating and sleeping every day, there is only study left.

It's kind of like a robot built for learning.

Such people, who are supposed to be geeks, are extremely difficult to deal with, such as Grigory Perelman, who proved Poincaré's conjecture. It's just one such weirdo.

He rejected almost all social and awards, and even the Fields Medal could not draw the other person out of the mountains and forests by studying mathematics like an ascetic.

The personalities of the two can be said to be almost identical, except for their interest in learning, they don't have much interest in other things.

But compared to Perelman, the human sophistication embodied by his student is not weak. At least, in the normal category of an average person.

For example, after he returned to China, he would bring him and Witten some special products and gifts, and he would also participate in various awards, receive and express his views and remarks. These and Perelman are two complete extremes.

......