Chapter 31: Hopefully A Genius
## Corrected Full English Text (Numbered Lines – NO CHINESE CHARACTERS):
Lin Ran smiled and shook his hand, responding: “Thank you, Sir Lincoln. I have long heard of the academic vitality of Hong Kong University and hope my arrival can bring new vitality here.”
Lin Ran’s English had long been adjusted to the most standard American English.
Mathematics Department Director Zhang Tianze couldn’t wait to step forward and said in Mandarin mixed with a Cantonese accent:
“Professor Lin, hello. We in the Hong Kong University Mathematics Department previously organized a one-month seminar to discuss your paper on the Fermat’s Conjecture Proof.
There are still some doubts that we hope to get personally clarified by you.
And your description of birds and frogs is also deeply recognized by everyone. We also hope to hear your views on mathematics learning and doing mathematical research.”
“Additionally, our students are all very much looking forward to your seminar.”
His tone carried a hint of admiration. Mathematics is such a discipline where the boundary between stronger individuals and weaker individuals is very clear.
And very importantly, the Mathematics Department is the discipline that values inheritance the most.
In many people’s stereotypical impression, mathematics seems to rely solely on paper, pen, and books to conduct academic research, but in fact, it values inheritance very much.
Minnesota State University had a project called the Math Genealogy Project, which is a web database specifically for collecting mathematicians’ academic lineages, initiated by Harry B. Coonce, starting in the fall of 1997.
The project is used to gather information on all mathematicians in the world, including all those who have obtained a PhD in Mathematics.
Among them, for the vast majority of famous mathematicians, you can trace back to ancestral masters with teacher-student relationships.
University of Göttingen became a mathematics center because of Gauss, Soviet Union’s mathematics is extremely strong because of the great god Euler, Paris became a mathematics center because of Grothendieck and other great gods.
Later, Princeton became a mathematics center because after World War II, German Scientists all fled from Göttingen to Princeton.
Lin Ran, who has the Randolph Program, in Zhang Tianze’s view, is the kind of mathematician who can lead Hong Kong University to soar together.
Lin Ran turned to him and replied in standard Mandarin with a slight smile: “Professor Zhang is too kind. This time I came to explore mathematics with Hong Kong’s students and hope they can also gain some inspiration.”
Then, he added a sentence in Cantonese: “Thank you for your welcome.”
This Cantonese sentence, though not very fluent, drew a round of kind laughter and applause from the locals present.
A member of the board of directors, a rich businessman named Mr. Huang, stepped forward and interjected: “Professor Lin, you are the pride of Chinese people. Being able to prove a conjecture that hadn’t been proven for centuries, returning to Hong Kong this time truly brings glory to us Chinese people!” His voice was loud and his face was full of smiles.
Because of Lin Ran’s visit, Hong Kong people felt quite uplifted. On one hand, it’s because the other party is important, a mathematician renowned globally; on the other hand, it’s because it is said that Cambridge University and Oxford University also extended visiting professor invitations to Lin Ran, but Lin Ran rejected Cambridge and Oxford yet accepted Hong Kong University.
Although there is the reason that everyone is Chinese people, it still boosts morale for Hong Kong people.
Especially the Chinese rich businessmen present, through their connections in the Hong Kong Government, knew that Lin Ran’s rejection of Cambridge and Oxford was not a rumor but a fact.
Lin Ran nodded slightly and responded humbly: “Mr. Huang is too serious. I am just a person who studies mathematics. Being able to bring glory to Chinese people is an unexpected joy. This time in Hong Kong, I hope more to help the young generation of Chinese people grow together.”
His tone was calm yet exuding a sense of determination, making Mr. Huang nod repeatedly.
At this moment, the surrounding reporters couldn’t hold back anymore.
First, a reporter from the South China Morning Post squeezed forward, his pen almost poking Lin Ran’s face: “Professor Lin, what plans do you have for the seminar? What knowledge will you impart to our students?”
His tone was eager, but his English was an exceptionally standard London accent.
Lin Ran chuckled lightly and answered: “I think the most important thing is to teach them some thinking methods and some interesting mathematical problems, hoping to spark their curiosity.”
Lin Ran’s answer was impeccable.
He certainly couldn’t say that he came here to teach calculus of variations and optimal control theory related to intercontinental ballistic missile trajectory optimization.
It is certainly true that Qian Xuesen worked on cybernetics, and his Engineering Cybernetics still has application scenarios even today.
But optimal control theory only formally emerged in November 1960 at the first International Congress on Automatic Control held in Moscow, with Bellman’s dynamic programming method, Pontryagin’s maximum principle, and Kalman filter’s LQ theory.
What Lin Ran wants to teach the seminar students is not this rough calculus of variations, but algorithms that will be widely verified in the space race in the future.
Furthermore, they are algorithms specifically optimized for the situation in China where computers are lacking and only manual calculation can be relied upon.
Take Pontryagin’s maximum principle as an example: the extremal principle he proposed in 1956 was used in America’s Redstone Rocket and Soviet Union’s R-7 rocket design.
But why couldn’t China use it? Because China had no IBM computers to provide computing power.
Relying only on manual calculation, the maximum principle is too difficult.
And Lin Ran wants to teach these theories in public without anyone noticing they are related to aerospace.
How to use future mathematical language to disguise missile trajectory as a pure academic game?
Lin Ran currently doesn’t know who China sent, but he had already casually mentioned to the president of the Overseas Chinese Daily News in America, Huang Yunji, that he likes to interact with true geniuses.
“I hope they send a real genius.” Lin Ran thought to himself amid the crowd: “Otherwise, if I redefine the objective function of optimal flight path as an extremal problem of functionals, saying this research is about extremal properties in abstract spaces.
Package air resistance and thrust into perturbation operators, disguise multi-body gravity as the action of symmetric groups—if he doesn’t understand, we’re done.”
As the dialogue unfolded, more and more students gathered around. Several young people in white school uniforms held up homemade signs that read “Welcome, Dr. Lin!”
Someone also used chalk to draw a large “∞” symbol on the ground, symbolizing the infinite charm of mathematics.
Heads poked out from the windows of the teaching building, female students holding telescopes gazing here, discussing:
“See him? See him?”
“Is he handsome?”
“Laura, give me the telescope to look!”
“He really is quite handsome and young. In these two months, who knows who can seize the opportunity.”
“I heard Professor Lin can talk Einstein into a daze with one sentence!”
“He’s a mathematician, not a physicist!”
“Can you get into his class? I didn’t even dare to take the application form!”
Laughter and conversation intertwined, the air filled with admiration for the great mathematician.
