Chapter 19: Rising To Fame
“Randolph, have you ever thought about coming to France to work for a few years?
At the French Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies in Paris, I, Jean Dieudonné, René Thom, Louis Michel, and David Ruelle and others are preparing to undertake some important work in the direction of algebraic geometry.
You should have seen the report I gave at the mathematics conference the year before last, in which I talked about the work we plan to do in the next decade.
After seeing the mathematical map you displayed, I had a great many new ideas about the work we are going to do; we may be able to achieve unification at the intrinsic logic level of different mathematics in this century.
Different subfields are just different forms of expression; they all have a unified core.
I believe with your joining, we can achieve all this more quickly.” Grothendieck did not speak French, but directly issued the invitation to Lin Ran in somewhat non-standard English.
His speed of speaking English was very slow, even somewhat unclear.
If Lin Ran were really a mathematician, such an opportunity would be enough to excite him so much that he couldn’t sleep, working together with a group of top mathematicians on work that could have a profound impact on the future of mathematics.
With his ability, taking over the title of Pope of Mathematics was not a sure thing, but it was nine out of ten.
Unfortunately, Lin Ran was not very interested in theoretical mathematics; for him, mathematics was a tool, a tool to better achieve aerospace goals, not the purpose.
“Professor, sorry, I don’t speak French and don’t really want to leave America. I think even if I’m in New York, we can keep in frequent contact via fax.” Lin Ran looked at this still young famous mathematician and politely declined.
Grothendieck did not invite again, but said: “Okay, feel free to exchange ideas with me anytime; Fox has my fax address.”
Then he grinned again: “I hope the thing about me rediscovering measure theory and Lebesgue integration in university doesn’t happen again; we shouldn’t waste too much time on meaningless things.”
Grothendieck attended university at the University of Montpellier; after discovering that all his teachers were just reading from the book, he stopped going to classes. According to historical records, Montpellier at that time was one of the most backward in teaching mathematics among all French universities.
In such an environment, Grothendieck rediscovered the concepts of measure theory and Lebesgue integration through his own efforts.
This was similar to Einstein developing the theory of statistical physics based on his own ideas.
“I understand, Professor, of course I understand.”
After the entire academic conference ended, all mathematicians acknowledged that Fermat’s Conjecture had been proved by Lin Ran, turning from a conjecture into a theorem.
The paper was not published in any mathematical journal.
At this time, New Progress in Mathematics had not yet been founded, Annals of Mathematics was a Swedish magazine, Annals of Mathematics was a journal run by Princeton University, and the American Mathematical Society Journal would not appear until the late 1980s.
These mathematical journals all wanted to publish Lin Ran’s paper on the proof of Fermat’s Conjecture, issuing it in the form of a special issue, with some of the top second-tier academic journals offering a sky-high publication fee of ten thousand US dollars.
It must be known that at that time, academic journals did not pay fees for publishing papers; instead, they charged authors money.
Taking Annals of Mathematics as an example, the page fee for long papers was about 200 to 500 US dollars.
Only a paper at the level of Fermat’s Conjecture, an article that could elevate the status of the entire academic journal, could receive such treatment.
Columbia University did not want to make wedding clothes for other academic journals, especially not for Annals of Mathematics, and given the environment at the time, the mathematics community itself needed a new top journal.
After the future publisher of New Progress in Mathematics, American Academic Press, got the news, they approached Columbia University, and the two sides hit it off; under their joint efforts, they co-published a new top journal in the field of mathematics.
The publication time of New Progress in Mathematics was advanced from the original 1965 to 1960, and Lin Ran’s proof of Fermat’s Conjecture became their inaugural work.
No publication fee, but Columbia University provided him with a long-term special research funding support of twenty thousand US dollars per year on the grounds of a long-term research project.
After Tsung-Dao Lee won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1957, Columbia University gave him the same treatment.
In addition to the special research funding, Columbia University also gave him the professorial chair of Professor James Madison.
This type of professorial chair is an endowed chair, mostly from alumni or corporate donations, and comes with extra allowances. James Madison was the fourth US President, and his endowed chair came with an additional ten thousand US dollars allowance per year.
That is to say, compared to ordinary mathematics professors, Lin Ran received an additional thirty thousand US dollars in annual salary from Columbia University each year.
In addition, Columbia’s implicit benefits included reduced teaching hours, dedicated assistants, and more.
Of course, not just these; the real big subsidy came from the Rockefeller Foundation.
The Rockefeller Foundation gave him long-term funding of fifty thousand US dollars per year.
That is to say, in 1960, Lin Ran’s total annual salary package was close to one hundred thousand US dollars.
“Who would have thought that the result was enjoying the treatment of a one hundred thousand US dollars annual salary first in 1960; this is already about the same compensation as a mid-level coder in Silicon Valley in 2020.” Lin Ran thought to himself.
In addition to monetary treatment, the rush of reports from various media further elevated his fame.
Previously, only the New York Times reported, using expressions like “allegedly,” “seemingly,” “possibly”; now it was simply “proved.”
On the surface, Lin Ran graduated from the University of Göttingen, and with his Chinese descent identity, various newspapers crowned him with titles like “Light of the Chinese,” “Chinese Gauss,” etc.
Compared to Yang Zhenning and Tsung-Dao Lee’s “parity non-conservation” when they won the Nobel Prize a few years ago, Lin Ran’s Fermat’s Conjecture was much easier to explain.
The extended Randolph Program was even praised by some mathematicians as pointing out the research direction for the entire 20th century mathematics.
This provided even more content to write about.
Even Mainland China had related reports, though in China’s reports, Lin Ran’s nationality information was omitted, emphasizing his Chinese identity.
The 4v side, because Lin Ran accepted the professorial invitation from 4v Tsinghua University, even more so blew him to the skies in their island newspapers, just short of saying he was the greatest mathematician of the 20th century; fortunately, they added “one of.”
The Chinese language newspaper Overseas Chinese Daily News founded in New York greatly promoted its significance to the Chinese people.
“In the witness of numerous mathematicians, the young Chinese descent mathematician Randolph Lin announced the solution to Fermat’s Conjecture, the theory contained within will change mathematical research in the 20th century and beyond, and it also heralds the strong potential of Chinese people in the field of science.”
