Chapter 452

Xu Qingzhou spent six days finishing the conference report.

On the 17th, he attended the drinking party held by Professor Roberts and Horn. In one year, their project successfully entered the third stage.

And on the penultimate day of the report meeting, he and Song Yao also went to the airport to pick up Professor Chu Jiangfeng, who was attending the report meeting.

Besides Chu Jiangfeng, there was also a middle-aged man in his forties from the Organization Department of Xia Nation.

For example, the "Ten Thousand Talents Program" that Xu Qingzhou once participated in was led by 11 ministries and commissions including the Organization Department and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

The four went to eat a meal together.

The purpose of the person from the Organization Department was, of course, very simple: to confirm Xu Qingzhou's thoughts in person and promise that if Xu Qingzhou returned, he could obtain various preferential treatments, funding, housing, and establish a specialized mathematical research institute, etc.

Xu Qingzhou also responded politely, making his plans clear.

The meal was quite good. The person from the Organization Department boarded the plane with a smile the next day to return and report on his mission.

The date of the report meeting arrived as scheduled.

"How is it?"

Xu Qingzhou came out of the bedroom.

Song Yao checked her makeup in the mirror, turned her head, looked at her boyfriend, and her eyes brightened, but she felt she couldn't show it too obviously, lest this guy get cocky, so she nodded slightly: "Hmm, not bad."

This guy wearing a suit actually looked quite like it...

Well, actually, he was very handsome!

Dark suit, straight shoulder lines, waist tucked just right, setting off a slender and upright figure. Compared to his usual slouching, he had less of the usual laziness and more stability and confidence.

"I think I'm quite handsome..."

Song Yao hadn't praised him yet, but Xu Qingzhou started to get cocky himself, handing the tie to Song Yao.

Song Yao helped her boyfriend tie the tie, couldn't help but lean in, feeling the temperature of Xu Qingzhou's chest through the white shirt.

Xu Qingzhou saw School Beauty Song saying it didn't look good, but she had been sticking to him for a long time: "Song Yao, we are all adults, can you have some self-control?"

"Let's go."

Song Yao hummed, thinking to herself that she had almost been fooled. This guy hadn't changed at all; he was still as cheap as ever.

Xu Qingzhou looked at Song Yao's back and sighed in admiration.

Song Yao was dressed very beautifully today: white long dress, exposing delicate and small shoulders, wearing high-heeled sandals, and the whole person looked even taller.

At 2:40 PM, the two arrived at MIT's Great Dome on time.

As MIT's most iconic building, the 10-250 lecture hall and Kresge Auditorium under the Great Dome were often used for major ceremonies, inaugural lectures, or school anniversary activities.

Quite a few people had already arrived early in the auditorium.

"Professor Xu, good afternoon."

"Good afternoon."

Xu Qingzhou nodded with a smile and responded, walking straight toward Chu Jiangfeng with Song Yao. Professor Roberts and several scholars from Xia Nation were all there.

Actually, there weren't many people from Xia Nation.

Because Jingda had already announced that Xu Qingzhou would hold a report meeting at Jingda on July 1st and 2nd.

Of course, academic exchange opportunities were rare, and some scholars interested in prime numbers or the Riemann Hypothesis would still come.

Everyone chatted for a few minutes, and at 3 PM, the inaugural ceremony began.

President L. Rafael Reif presided over the ceremony.

"Today, we gather here to witness a historic moment. The person standing before us is a shining new star in the mathematical world. With extraordinary wisdom and perseverance, he has conquered a mathematical problem that has troubled humanity for more than a century..."

"Let us welcome the new professor of the MIT Department of Mathematics and prover of the Riemann Hypothesis—Professor Xu Qingzhou, with the warmest applause!"

Amidst the applause, Xu Qingzhou walked onto the stage calmly and slowly. Having experienced countless big scenes before, he wouldn't get stage fright.

"Congratulations, Professor Xu."

L. Rafael Reif handed over the appointment letter and medal, as well as a scepter engraved with the zeta function symbol.

"Thank you." Xu Qingzhou thanked him.

Warm applause rang out in the audience again.

Looking at Xu Qingzhou on the stage, Chu Jiangfeng was incredibly moved. He was absolutely convinced that this Xu Qingzhou would sooner or later become the kind of person that even he couldn't reach.

There was hope for Xia Nation's mathematical world.

Xu Qingzhou came to the microphone and said: "Many people ask me, what does it take to crack a century-old conjecture? Is it talent? Is it luck? I think it requires a kind of stubborn belief—believing that behind those 'impossibilities' hides the most elegant answer in the universe."

"MIT's spirit is 'mens et manus' (mind and hand). Here, theory is never confined to paper but is transformed into a force that changes the world."

"..."

Xu Qingzhou talked freely on the stage, while Song Yao held her phone, taking photos and recording videos for the two pairs of parents far away in Rongcheng.

"Therefore, I thought of introducing interaction terms and using the properties of the Riemann zeta function to perform reverse calculations on this density function... I am lucky to be able to do this step. Only by taking some things to the extreme can we find such a relationship."

"Compared to me giving a speech here, I believe everyone would rather hear the details of the Riemann Hypothesis."

Xu Qingzhou spoke briefly for a few minutes and then went straight to the topic, starting to talk about the content of the proof.

"This formula looks ordinary, but there is a point that is very worthy of our attention. Everyone should have noticed that k is an integer, while p is greatly restricted."

"∑=1(2πi)21f(s)xszk1dsdz."

Everything proceeded in an orderly manner.

At 5:30 PM, amidst the applause, the report meeting ended.

The proof of the Riemann Hypothesis had more than 170 pages, so one report meeting definitely couldn't finish it, so there would be a 90-minute report the next morning.

In between was a one-hour break.

Xu Qingzhou first accepted media interviews and took Song Yao and Professor Chu Jiangfeng and the others to eat something to replenish their energy.

At 6:30 PM, everyone went to the MIT Faculty Club to attend the celebration party.

Inside, there was a "Critical Line" themed light show. Under the glass dome, the champagne tower refracted the golden fragments of the crystal chandelier, and everyone's eyes were fixed on the direction of Xu Qingzhou and Song Yao.

There weren't many procedures. Xu Qingzhou went on stage and said a few words, everyone raised their champagne to toast, and the party officially began.

The role of this kind of party was actually about the same, nothing more than academic exchange and expanding connections.

Seeing Xu Qingzhou finish greeting the president and the board of directors, and having some free time, other scholars also came over with wine glasses, chatted for a while, and left business cards, etc.

Just like this, Xu Qingzhou had just become free when a middle-aged man with a Xia Nation face walked over: "Hello, Professor Xu, finally met."

"Professor Tao."

The two greeted each other.

The person in front of him was exactly the world-renowned Chinese mathematician Tao Zhexuan.

Xu Qingzhou introduced Song Yao: "This is my girlfriend, Song Yao."

Tao Zhexuan smiled: "Hello, Ms. Song. Seeing the two of you, I thought of that Xia Nation idiom—a talented man and a beautiful woman."

"Thank you for your praise." Song Yao responded politely.

"When I was 21, I was still crying over harmonic analysis homework, and you have actually torn off the last blank page of the number theory history book... You exploded a black hole in the universe of mathematics, and we are all lucky ants overturned by gravitational waves."

"You're overpraising me, I was just lucky." Xu Qingzhou shook his head modestly.

The two's topic soon entered the academic field. Tao Zhexuan's Mandarin wasn't very good, and the two finally talked in English.

Song Yao listened quietly, not bored, playing with Xu Qingzhou's hand under the table.

"I used your zero control method and my own GPY sieve framework, hoping to solve the random model deviation in the Hardy-Littlewood conjecture, but the result..." Tao Zhexuan sighed.

Xu Qingzhou pondered for a moment and said: "After the certainty of the zeta function's zeros intervenes, the weight distribution of the sieve method will trigger new singularities."

"That's right, do you have any good ideas?" Tao Zhexuan nodded.

After Xu Qingzhou finished thinking, he said: "In the past, I was forced to reconstruct the Selberg framework in the critical line construction, and the result was that it naturally adapted to the pseudo-random conditions in your preprint last year—but the price is that all classical estimates relying on the Landau-Siegel zero must be recast."

"Have you tried embedding the GPY dense interval into my zero control topology..."

"Just like this glass of wine, when certainty bubbles replace random bubbles, the sieve needs to re-weave the density threshold, but the random sedimentation of sugar grains will interfere with the Hardy-Littlewood constant."

Hearing this, Tao Zhexuan frowned, constructing the formula in his mind according to Xu Qingzhou's statement: "The complex geometry version of the Chen-Grothendieck duality principle... the final interval lower bound is not a constant c, but a dynamic collapse function..."

"Yes."

"Xu, everyone calls me a person favored by God. Looking at it now, God is more biased toward you. Do you want to try the Goldbach Conjecture?"

"Goldbach Conjecture... I don't have any plans to make things difficult for myself right now." Xu Qingzhou refused tactfully. He had just struggled out of the quagmire of the Riemann Hypothesis and didn't want to fall into another pit.

"What a pity. If you are willing, we can work on this project together. Hehe, I have already extended some of Chen Jingrun's ideas of '1+2' during the proof. I can send you the materials."

"Thank you, Professor." Xu Qingzhou thanked him.

"We are learning from each other."

Tao Zhexuan shook his head, paused, and asked curiously: "What project are you planning to do next?"

Xu Qingzhou smiled and said: "Want to do a physics project."

"Physics... It's good to be young, you can try anything..."

Tao Zhexuan was stunned for a moment and sighed: "I once studied the Riemann Hypothesis, wanting to improve on the basis of Professor Maynard and the others, but as you can see, I failed."

"I also tried. His sieve method is efficient in dealing with prime number distribution, but it is difficult to reach the core problem of the Riemann Hypothesis. The sieve method is essentially a combination and real analysis tool, while the Riemann Hypothesis requires analytic continuation and fine estimation of complex functions."

"It seems you have also encountered similar problems."

Xu Qingzhou and Tao Zhexuan chatted for about 10 minutes, exchanged contact information, and left.

Just after the two separated from Tao Zhexuan, a figure walked up.

"Hi, Ms. Song, Mr. Xu." Mia said with a smile.

"Ms. Ryan, see you again..."

Xu Qingzhou had a deep impression of this woman who left the father but kept the child, even feeling a bit like avoiding a snake or scorpion.

This woman wasn't targeting him anymore, but her goal seemed to have shifted to Song Yao.

"Congratulations, Xu. When I knew you were solving the Riemann Hypothesis before, I had a premonition that you were destined to be remembered in history..."

"Thank you."

"Ms. Song, I still need to stay here for three days. If you have time, how about going out for a drink together?"

"Sorry, I've been quite busy lately."

Song Yao refused ruthlessly. How should she put it? She couldn't stand this enthusiastic woman a bit.

The three toasted, chatted briefly, and left in Mia's resentful gaze.

As for why Mia, who was into physics, appeared here... it was very normal. Mathematics and physics couldn't be separated.

Just after getting rid of Mia, an old professor with white hair tremblingly raised his wine glass: "Young man, you let me live to see one of the 'ultimate answers of mathematics'!"

Xu Qingzhou gently touched his glass with him.

"Sir, your words remind me of Riemann's manuscript—in those unfinished proofs, there are always the footprints of those who came later. If I can really touch the corner of truth, it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants like you... This cup, I toast to all the 'unfinished' that paved the way for us."

The night wind of the Charles River outside the window swept past with maple leaves. In the hall, it was extremely lively.

After walking around the party, Xu Qingzhou pulled Song Yao to find a corner with fewer people, avoiding those who came to chat. He pinched Song Yao's hand: "Adapting?"

"Hmm."

Song Yao nodded. When she followed Professor Li Daiyue and Professor Morton to attend exchange meetings in the past, she had also experienced such drinking parties.

The mathematicians present...

Song Yao scanned, retracted her gaze, and fell on Xu Qingzhou's hair, couldn't help but worry a bit. The hair loss rate of people studying mathematics was too high.

Fortunately, this guy had no signs of hair loss so far.

No, she would supervise him to drink less and stay up less in the future... if he dared not listen, hmph.

Xu Qingzhou's expression was strange: "Why do I feel like you want to beat me?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"..."

Xu Qingzhou reflected on the day's itinerary; he didn't seem to have done anything asking for a beating.

He wondered: "Do you have a strange hobby of only being happy when you beat your boyfriend?"

"It's clearly you who have a hobby of being happy when you get beaten..."

Song Yao pursed her lips and didn't explain. She looked around and saw no one noticed them here, then pecked Xu Qingzhou on the face and said: "I will try to convince people with virtue in the future."

Xu Qingzhou: "?"

9:30 PM.

The two pushed the door in and saw Er Miao squatting on the shoe cabinet, looking eagerly.

Xu Qingzhou said: "Is the automatic feeder out of cat food again?"

"Seems like it..."

Song Yao remembered that she was still considering putting cat food for Er Miao when she had breakfast, but later she was busy looking at this person's suit... lust blinds the mind.

"Phew~"

Song Yao went to pour food for Er Miao, and Xu Qingzhou collapsed on the sofa, letting out a long sigh of relief. After the whole process today, it was still quite tiring.

Song Yao turned back.

Now she understood a bit why this guy always liked to let her wear those strange clothes before.

"Tsk tsk, too handsome."

Xu Qingzhou held his phone, flipped through the photos Song Yao took for him, and was intoxicated for a while.

Song Yao curled her lips. She didn't refute this time, walked back to the bedroom kicking and stepping, and when she came out again, there was already a black rubber band in her hand.

Xu Qingzhou looked at School Beauty Song, who was starting to tie her hair, and felt a bad premonition. He had noticed this girl's eyes falling on him from time to time just now.

Creak~

Xu Qingzhou was pressed onto the sofa.

"Professor Xu~"

"Be gentle, hiss~"

(End of chapter)