Chapter 33: These are all related to missile trajectory optimization

In a tiered classroom at the University of Xiangjiang, sunlight filtered through the window lattices, spilling onto Lin Ran's lecture notes.

"Everyone, the roll call just now was to get to know you all."

Lin Ran had attended a banquet hosted by Xiangjiang's elite on his first night in the city, and by the second day, he had begun his seminar without a moment's rest.

After the roll call, combining the surname 'Chen' with a photo of a young Chen Jingrun he had found on the internet back in 2020, and noting the man's out-of-place aura among the 50 students in the room, Lin Ran could confirm that the person sent by Cultural Huaguo was indeed Chen Jingrun.

He felt a sense of relief; Cultural Huaguo had not underestimated him, sending a true genius.

Lin Ran had suspected as much; as long as Cultural Huaguo took him seriously enough, the person sent would nine times out of ten be Chen Jingrun.

Because at this point in time, only Chen Jingrun was suitable.

"Very well, all 50 people are here. Because my time in Xiangjiang is limited, I took the trouble before coming to have the University of Xiangjiang prepare a written test for me.

This was to set a certain threshold, ensuring everyone can keep up during this course.

After all, without a threshold, there would be no way to gradually cover the content I want to teach in just two months.

For students without a mathematical foundation, the material I am about to cover will be somewhat abstruse.

Alright, since you are all excellent students with a foundation, I will skip topics like what calculus is, the basics of linear algebra, and differential equations.

We will start directly with functional analysis and function spaces.

And let me first tell you all, the theme of this seminar is: "On the Extremal Properties of Functional Spaces under Symmetry Group Actions: An Exploration from Harmonic Analysis to Algebraic Geometry"..."

Li Shaoyuan had always thought he had a bit of talent in mathematics, but he found that even though he was listening very attentively, he gradually couldn't keep up and had no idea what Professor Lin was talking about.

He glanced at his desk mate who was listening intently; he remembered this guy was called Chen Dehui during the roll call.

In this era in Xiangjiang, ordinary poor people, especially refugees who had fled from the mainland, usually wore cheap cotton clothes produced by local factories—breathable but rough, and in monotonous colors.

The rich, however, liked to wear the Hawaiian shirts currently popular in America, preferably with patterns.

Chen Dehui was wearing a cotton short-sleeve shirt, while Li Shaoyuan was wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

"Hey, can you understand what the professor is talking about?" Li Shaoyuan asked in a low voice.

Chen Jingrun, currently using the alias Chen Dehui, replied in clumsy Cantonese: "Of course."

Then he ignored Li Shaoyuan.

Li Shaoyuan poked him with his pen again. "What is Professor Lin talking about?"

"He is using the example of the orthogonality of Fourier series to teach us the concepts of norms and inner products." Chen Jingrun said with an 'it goes without saying' attitude.

Clearly, functional analysis was a breeze for him; the basic concepts within it were things he had learned long ago, but the examples and perspectives Lin Ran chose gave him a sense of sudden enlightenment. He inwardly mused that the man was indeed a master-level figure.

The entire teaching style had a sense of "a heavy sword has no edge, yet its power is immense."

However, even Chen Jingrun felt Lin Ran's sense of urgency. He spoke very clearly, but also very quickly; after finishing a point, he would rush forward without asking if everyone had understood.

Chen Jingrun had listened to others lecture while in Cultural Huaguo, and had lectured students himself, but he had never seen this style.

Li Shaoyuan, meanwhile, was having a crisis of faith, because he discovered that his desk mate—this obviously poor person from the bottom of society, whose clothing and aura screamed "no money"—could actually understand.

He could actually understand.

After the class ended, he felt a bit of admiration for the man: "Can you explain it to me? I'm willing to pay you." After saying this, he pulled a handful of Xiangjiang dollars from his pocket.

Chen Jingrun was very tempted, but considering he still had to go back to copy these down, place them in a designated spot, and then transmit them back to the mainland, he had to refuse this money, which amounted to a month's salary in the mainland.

After Li Shaoyuan returned home, his younger sister Li Huiling, who was also studying at the University of Xiangjiang and went by the English name Helen, hurriedly took his schoolbag: "Brother, how was it? Did you manage to get Professor Lin's autograph for me?"

Li Shaoyuan handed the inaugural issue of "New Advances in Mathematics," which contained Lin Ran's paper proving the Fermat Conjecture, to Li Huiling. "Here, I troubled Professor Lin to sign the title page."

After Li Huiling opened it and saw the two large characters "Lin Ran" written on it, she screamed in excitement: "Thanks, brother! You really are my own brother!

Now, won't those bitches be green with envy?

Did you ask him to come to our house for dinner like I told you?"

Li Shaoyuan shook his head: "No, it's only the first day, what's the rush?"

Li Shaoyuan and Li Huiling came from the Li family, though not the Li family of Li Ka-shing, but the Li family of Li Guanchun, the founder of the Bank of East Asia.

For them, being able to arrange a marriage with Lin Ran would definitely be a top-tier choice.

Moreover, old-money families like Li Guanchun's were well aware of the weight of being a closed-door disciple of Professor Horkheimer, and were also clear about the influence of the Frankfurt School in America, England, and the entire Western world.

The point about being a closed-door disciple of Professor Horkheimer had been publicly acknowledged by Horkheimer himself in an interview.

Whether it was Lin Ran himself or the Frankfurt School he backed, it was enough to make Xiangjiang's old-money families feel tempted.

This was the weight of his value.

However, the seminar started with 50 people on the first day, 47 on the second, and 40 on the third; the number of people was constantly decreasing.

After one week, only 20 people remained who could persist in attending the seminar, more than half having dropped out.

Li Shaoyuan, who fancied himself a genius, couldn't hold on either, because he truly couldn't understand the content Lin Ran was teaching; sitting there dryly for a whole day was just too agonizing.

It was truly too torturous.

Lin Ran had already moved on to the study of symmetry and extremum, and Li Shaoyuan felt like he was listening to a heavenly book.

Even Chen Jingrun felt the strain, because this had already begun to enter the core of the calculus of variations.

On the surface, it was the study of symmetry and extremum, but the core was the calculus of variations.

Lin Ran used string vibration to package potential perturbation terms in aerospace.

He used the idea that symmetry is the mathematical law of the natural world to package Noether's Theorem.

He used the motion of a pendulum to draw an analogy to missile trajectories.

The students present only felt it was abstruse and difficult to understand.

Xiangjiang media reported on this extensively, but they didn't criticize Lin Ran; instead, they praised him, saying a master is indeed a master.

When you are famous, your problems are not only not problems, but are instead a manifestation of your capability.

The world is truly so wondrous.

As the lectures entered the third week, when he began to discuss extremal problems combining the calculus of variations and group theory, Lin Ran seized the opportunity when 13 of the remaining 14 students went to the restroom.

With only Chen Jingrun, alias Chen Dehui, sitting in his seat frantically taking notes, he quietly walked over to him and whispered:

"These are actually all related to intercontinental missile optimization." ===== CHAPTER 34 =====