Chapter 390: Plans Before China

Lu Zhou’s flight to China was after Christmas.

He had three days before his flight, and he planned to run some errands. This was to prevent him from being swamped when he returned back to Princeton after the break.

The first matter he had to deal with was the “existence of a smooth solution to three-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equation” research project.

Other than the plasma turbulence phenomenon, this was Lu Zhou’s most important research project.

There had only been one discussion meeting ever since the “NS research project group” was established.

The next day, Lu Zhou went to Nassau Hall to hand in his holiday application. He then went to the Department of Mathematics building at Princeton University where he found Professor Fefferman’s office.

When he arrived, Professor Fefferman was talking about next month’s American Mathematical Society Conference with his students.

When Professor Fefferman saw Lu Zhou holding a holiday application in his hand, he smiled.

“You plan on returning to China?”

Lu Zhou replied, “Yeah, instead of Christmas, Chinese New Year is my real holiday. I’ll probably come back around mid-February.”

Professor Fefferman nodded and casually said, “You really do need a break to relax. Very few scholars work themselves to the bone in so many research projects in such a short amount of time.”

“Working to the bone?” Lu Zhou shook his head and said, “I don’t feel that way at all. After all, research is a fun and interesting thing.”

“I thought the same when I was young,” Professor Fefferman smiled and said, “but I found out that no matter how interesting the mathematics problem is, moderation is key.”

Lu Zhou said, “… That’s because you’ve already received all of the honors you could possibly get.”

Earlier this year, the Wolf Prize Foundation announced the winner’s list, and the most important award was given to Professor Fefferman.

The Wolf Prize was regarded as the ultimate mathematics award. It was mainly given to mathematicians over 40 years old for their long-standing contribution to the mathematics community.

Fefferman was the youngest person ever to receive the Fields Medal, and now, he had the ultimate mature mathematician award. There wasn’t another mathematics award he could aim for.

“What do you mean? No amount of awards is enough, plus I’m still missing an Abel Prize,” Professor Fefferman said. He then smiled as he continued, “In short, go enjoy your life. I won’t send you any emails until February.”

Lu Zhou asked, “What about the Navier–Stokes equation?”

Professor Fefferman said, “We’ll talk about that in a month.”

When Lu Zhou saw that Fefferman didn’t budge, he shrugged.

“Okay, if you insist.”

…

Other than Professor Fefferman and Lu Zhou’s collaboration project, Lu Zhou’s Collatz conjecture project also came to an end.

Perhaps it was because of Lu Zhou’s influence or because of the Collatz conjecture’s popularity, the thesis on arXiv attracted a lot of attention.

Many people referred to the Collatz conjecture as another “victory application” of the Group Structure Method.

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What surprised people the most was that instead of Lu Zhou, it was his students who applied the method.

It was the morning of the 27th, one day until Lu Zhou’s flight.

Lu Zhou sat in his office at the Institute for Advanced Study while he read Vera’s thesis.

Although he had read the entire proof process, as their supervisor, Lu Zhou still had to review every single detail before they could officially submit the thesis.

Also, he had to determine the thesis authors.

Normally, the names of the three students would be listed according to their respective contributions.

As for Lu Zhou, he would be the fourth and corresponding thesis author.

Of course, as their supervisor, he had the right to claim the results as his own. However, he would never compromise his integrity like this.

Normally, a supervisor wouldn’t be willing to give the thesis results to their students, but Lu Zhou didn’t care.

The Collatz conjecture wasn’t worth anything to Lu Zhou.

Even if Lu Zhou claimed it, it would only be the icing on the cake.

In addition to the author list, this type of collaborative theses would also indicate exactly what each author did. Most research institutes cared about this part more than the author ranking order.

However, Lu Zhou noticed that Vera didn’t list out each author’s contributions. Instead, she wrote, “These authors contributed equally to this work” and left the section at that.

Adding this sentence to the thesis meant that every author contributed equally and everyone was integral to the thesis.

This also meant that all of the authors in the thesis would be considered equally ranked.

“Is it fine?” Lu Zhou read the thesis in its entirety before he looked at Vera and said, “This isn’t fair for you.”

Although Lu Zhou hadn’t directly participated in the project, he had been keeping up with the progress of the project.

For example, he would have a weekly discussion meeting whenever he was at Princeton, and he would carefully read the in-progress reports.

It was no exaggeration to say that Vera was responsible for 70% of the research project, while Hardy and Qin Yue was only responsible for the remaining 30%.

Vera shook her head. “I just like to research these problems. As for who contributed more… I don’t think it matters.”

“If you really think that way, then I’ll respect your decision.” Lu Zhou didn’t try to persuade her.

Qin Yue put in a lot of effort; Hardy, not so much. However, Vera was willing to give them equal amounts of credit, and so, Lu Zhou didn’t pursue the matter.

At most, Lu Zhou felt a little pity for Vera.

Lu Zhou paused for a second and placed the thesis on the table as he continued to speak to Vera.

“According to the original agreement, I will help you guys apply for graduation. You’ll receive the diploma in three to four months. If you plan on studying a PhD under me, it’s best to apply as soon as possible so that I can accept your application.”

Lu Zhou was well aware of his student’s abilities; interviewing them would be a piece of cake.

Vera nodded seriously.

“Okay, I understand!”