Chapter 112: New York Mathematics Banquet
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Your point of focus is so peculiar, it left me speechless. Lin Ran looked at Jenny’s serious eyes, paused for several seconds, and then replied: “In a dream, who remembers so many details.
I just remember the general idea.”
Lin Ran continued: “Moreover, it should be Chinese people, after all, there is the existence of anti-miscegenation laws.”
Jenny first said: “Anti-miscegenation laws aren’t applicable in all states. This is New York State, which abolished them over a hundred years ago.
Only those southern states still have this law.
But we’ll never go to the southern states in our lifetime.”
Then she suddenly smiled and said: “Professor, I’m from the law department. Don’t bring your superficial legal knowledge in front of me.
You’d be better off chatting with me about mathematics or philosophy. Also, don’t be too tense; I’m not in that much of a hurry.
Wait until Christmas Eve at 12:30 noon, then come downstairs at the Clarendon Building to pick me up.”
Hearst finished speaking, picked up her bag, and left the meeting room. Lin Ran reminded: “Jenny, that afternoon on Christmas Eve is the mathematics seminar. I’m worried you’ll be bored sitting there.
How about I pick you up again before the evening banquet starts?”
Jenny replied without turning her head: “Pick me up in the afternoon; it doesn’t matter if I don’t understand.”
Bringing Jenny to the New York Mathematicians’ Banquet was the exchange condition where the other party helped Lin Ran find Philip K. Dick and gather to publish Philip K. Dick’s novels.
After hearing the other party’s residence, Lin Ran couldn’t help but be astonished and inwardly grumbled: these rich people.
The Clarendon Building is located in the inch-of-land-inch-of-gold Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Jenny’s grandfather William Hearst was the first to buy the top three floors of the building and turn them into an aerial villa. Later, feeling it was too small, he directly bought the entire building.
Afterward, he even transformed the top five floors directly into an aerial villa: a 700-square-meter aerial villa plus a 900-square-meter terrace.
That is, Lin Ran only knew this place was particularly expensive and didn’t know people lived in an entire aerial villa, otherwise he could be even more envious.
Although with his income, he could afford it sooner or later, Lin Ran hadn’t psychologically completed such a change yet.
He and America’s old established capital weren’t on the same page at all in terms of consumption concepts.
On Christmas Eve, Lin Ran drove a red Beetle he specially found to pick up Jenny.
John Morgan was speechless when he heard about it. He insisted on lending his Rolls-Royce to Lin Ran: “Randolph, driving a Beetle to Manhattan’s Upper West Side is totally mismatched, okay.”
Lin Ran’s response was: “If I drive a Rolls-Royce to the mathematicians’ banquet, that would be even more mismatched, okay.
Others might think I’m there to show off.”
Jenny, sitting in the passenger seat, had a surprised expression: “Professor, I often see this car in magazines, but this is my first time riding in one. It’s indeed quite interesting.”
Lin Ran sighed inwardly, then pretended casually: “Hold on tight; I’m going to speed.”
Jenny burst out laughing, clearly not believing a Beetle could speed.
The seminar was held in an old-style classroom at City College. After Lin Ran and Jenny entered the classroom, they found seats on the side of the front row and sat down.
Although he was sitting on the edge, mathematicians kept arriving one after another, taking turns to come greet Lin Ran.
“Randolph, long time no see.”
“Randolph, congratulations on winning the Nobel Prize. You should be the first mathematician to win the Nobel Prize, right?”
“Not bad, Randolph. In the future, if more mathematicians win the Nobel Peace Prize, it could make up for the regret of there being no Nobel Prize in mathematics.”
“Randolph, congratulations on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. You should be the first mathematician to collect both the Nobel and Fields.”
Lin Ran also introduced Jenny to them, saying she was his date for the evening event, and he brought her early to attend the seminar.
Everyone had an understanding expression.
But Jenny seemed a bit worried.
Once everyone had gradually taken their seats and no one came to greet anymore, Jenny leaned to Lin Ran’s ear and whispered: “The proportion of bald mathematicians is a bit high.
Professor, you won’t go bald in a few years, will you?”
Lin Ran smiled bitterly. This reminded him of when he was consulting for a student from another school. He heard a freshman from Jiangda University’s mathematics department mention this. The consultation content was related to studying abroad and changing majors.
Lin Ran reminded that if going abroad to study pure mathematics, it was easy to apply for PhDs in the US top fifty or even top thirty. If studying PhDs in other majors, the US top one hundred would be very difficult. The other party was determined to change majors.
Upon detailed inquiry, he learned that during a full faculty meeting at the faculty of mathematics, when everyone stood up, he looked and saw that the bald probability among the professors in front was at least over eighty percent. For the sake of his hair, he was determined not to do pure mathematics.
Although Lin Ran didn’t know the exact relationship between baldness and mathematics, upon closer look, there did seem to be quite a few without hair.
“Probably not.” Lin Ran wasn’t certain.
Who could be sure that traversing back and forth through doors wouldn’t have side effects.
After the seminar officially began, Harvey Cohen first gave opening remarks, welcoming everyone and introducing the theme of today’s seminar:
“The content we’re discussing today is algebraic and analytic methods in number theory. I’m very pleased to have invited professors from Columbia University, including Randolph Lin who now works at the White House. Everyone should know that inviting Randolph is no easy task.
Even Columbia University’s own mathematics professors rarely get to see Randolph.”
After he finished, the audience burst into laughter. The colleagues sitting next to Ralph Fox (head of Columbia University Mathematics Department) were all teasing him.
“Besides colleagues from the New York mathematics community, there are quite a few mathematicians from Princeton, like Atle Selberg, Armand Borel, Harald Cramér, and so on, even including Paul Cohen who came from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Anyway, welcome everyone.
I hope today will be a wonderful day.”
Today Lin Ran wasn’t speaking; he was mainly sitting in the audience listening.
Mainly because with only half a day, if Lin Ran spoke and burst out some major achievement, the entire afternoon would revolve around discussing Lin Ran’s content, leaving no time for other mathematicians to share.
Lin Ran himself was happy with this arrangement.
“Hello everyone, the content I’m talking about today is the application of p-adic analysis in number theory.
We all know that real numbers are based on Euclidean distance, while p-adic numbers are based on a completely different metric, namely the p-adic norm.
For a prime number p, any rational number x can be expressed as x = p^k * (a/b), where a and b are not divisible by p, and its p-adic norm is defined as |x|_p = p^(-k). This structure reveals the local properties of numbers.
When p=2, the 2-adic norm of one-third is 1, and the 2-adic norm of 8 is one-eighth.”
Paul Cohen is a New Yorker who didn’t leave Brooklyn for high school or college: high school at Stuyvesant High School, college at Brooklyn College.
Although he now teaches at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, compared to Lin Ran, he seems more like a native New York mathematician.
“Local fields are powerful tools for studying algebraic number theory because they allow us to ‘zoom in’ on the local behavior of global fields. Current hot topics include how to use p-adic analysis to solve classic number theory problems, like prime distribution or quadratic residues.”
Lin Ran listened with great interest because the content seemed very simple to him, more like a Sudoku game mathematicians play in their leisure time.
Standing on the shoulders of later generations, the prime distribution he mentioned already had massive research achievements in later times. What Lin Ran did was simply compare his confusions and ideas with the later achievements in his memory.
Jenny sitting next to him was about to faint.
From the first sentence, she started zoning out, not knowing what was being said.
Let alone suddenly jumping from concepts like p-adic norm to local fields.
The entire seminar had three presentations in total.
The first was Paul Cohen on “The Application of p-adic Analysis in Number Theory,” exploring the latest progress on p-adic numbers and local fields.
Then Harold N. Shapiro on “New Methods in Analytic Number Theory,” sharing his achievements in prime distribution research.
And finally Harvey Cohen himself on “The Connection Between Algebraic Geometry and Number Theory,” discussing the potential applications of abelian varieties in number theory.
Although Jenny couldn’t understand what the mathematicians were talking about, she could see that after each presentation, they all asked for Lin Ran’s opinion, and the mathematicians present had thoughtful expressions after he spoke.
As a reporter, she couldn’t help but sigh that Lin Ran was indeed one of the greatest mathematicians of the century, the undisputed number one figure in the New York mathematics community.
When the evening banquet began, Jenny’s such feelings deepened even more.
The banquet was at The Faculty House, next to Columbia University, a historic faculty club often used for academic activities or scholars’ banquets in the past.
The hall was decorated simply and elegantly, with the main course being roast turkey with mashed potatoes, and dessert being pumpkin pie.
Jenny said: “Professor, actually I could sponsor your banquet at a hotel in Manhattan.
It doesn’t have to be in the school canteen.”
Lin Ran held his forehead: “If it were a luxury hotel, everyone would feel uncomfortable instead.
Would mathematicians have to wear tuxedos? Probably many here would be lucky to have a suit.”
After the banquet began, Lin Ran shuttled between tables discussing some of his recent ideas around the twin prime problem with everyone.
This also led to teasing. Harvey Cohen said: “Randolph, you’ve put too much energy into the White House.
Otherwise, with your ability, the twin prime problem wouldn’t stump you for long.
You wouldn’t be telling us ideas; you should be telling us directly that I, Randolph, have already solved the twin prime conjecture.”
Lin Ran gave an awkward laugh.
Including occasionally chatting a couple of sentences with Jenny to avoid her getting too bored.
Finally finding an opportunity when no one was next to Chen Jingrun, he walked over and whispered in his ear: “There’s something for you in the first red telephone booth on the left at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and 46th Street in Times Square. Remember to burn the note.”
He believed that this Chinese, the other party would remember very clearly.
