Chapter 32: All These Relate To Missile Trajectory Optimization
In the lecture hall of Hong Kong University, sunlight passed through the window lattice and shone on Lin Ran’s lecture notes.
“Everyone, the roll call just now was to get to know you all.”
Lin Ran attended a banquet held by Hong Kong celebrities on the first night he arrived in Hong Kong, and the next day he started the seminar without delay.
After the roll call, combining the surname Chen with the photo of Chen Jingrun when he was young that he found online in 2020, and the other’s temperament that stood out among the 50 people in the entire classroom, Lin Ran could confirm that the person sent by China was Chen Jingrun.
He breathed a sigh of relief inwardly; China hadn’t underestimated him and had sent a true genius.
Lin Ran had guessed this before; as long as China valued him enough, the person coming would most likely be Chen Jingrun.
Because at this point in time, only Chen Jingrun was the most suitable.
“Very good, all 50 people are here. Since my time in Hong Kong is limited, I specially troubled Hong Kong University to prepare a written test for me before I came.
The purpose is to set a certain threshold so that everyone can keep up in this course.
After all, without a threshold, two months’ time definitely wouldn’t allow me to gradually cover all the content I want to teach.
For classmates without a math foundation, the content I want to teach will be somewhat difficult.
Alright, since you all are excellent students with a foundation, I won’t lecture on things like what calculus is, basics of linear algebra, differential equations.
We’ll start directly from functionals and function spaces.
And let me tell you first, the theme of this seminar is: ‘On the Extremal Properties of Functional Spaces under Symmetric Group Actions: Exploration from Harmonic Analysis to Algebraic Geometry’.”
Li Shaoyuan had always thought he had some talent in mathematics, but he found that even though he was listening attentively, he gradually couldn’t keep up and had no idea what Professor Lin was talking about.
He glanced at his deskmate who was listening intently beside him; he remembered this guy was called Chen Dehui during the roll call earlier.
In Hong Kong of this era, poor people, especially refugees who fled from the Mainland, generally wore cheap cotton cloth clothes produced by local factories—breathable but rough, with relatively single colors.
Whereas rich people liked to wear the currently popular America Hawaii shirts, preferably with patterns.
Chen Dehui was wearing a cotton cloth short-sleeve, while Li Shaoyuan was wearing a Hawaii shirt.
“Hey, hey, can you understand what the professor is talking about?” Li Shaoyuan asked in a low voice.
At this time, Chen Jingrun, who was using the alias Chen Dehui, replied in clumsy Cantonese: “Of course.”
Then he ignored Li Shaoyuan.
Li Shaoyuan poked him again with his pen, “What is Professor Lin talking about?”
“He’s using the orthogonality of Fourier series as an example to teach us the concepts of norm and inner product.” Chen Jingrun said as if it were a matter of course.
Obviously, functional analysis was a piece of cake for him; the basic concepts inside were things he had learned long ago. It was just that Lin Ran’s chosen examples and perspectives gave him a sense of sudden enlightenment, and he thought to himself that the other was indeed a master-level figure.
The entire teaching had a sense of a blunt sword being the heaviest and great skill appearing clumsy.
However, even Chen Jingrun felt Lin Ran’s urgency; he lectured very clearly but also very quickly. After one pass, without asking if everyone understood, he hurriedly pushed forward.
Chen Jingrun had heard others lecture in China and had lectured to students himself, but he had never seen this style.
Li Shaoyuan was starting to doubt his life, because he found his deskmate, this obvious bottom-tier poor person, had “no money” written all over him from his clothes to his temperament.
And yet he could actually understand.
After the course ended, he somewhat admired him: “Can you explain it to me? I’m willing to pay you.” After saying that, he pulled out a handful of Hong Kong dollars from his pocket.
Chen Jingrun was very tempted, but considering he still had to go back to copy these down, put them in the designated place, and send them back to the Mainland, he had to refuse—this was a month’s salary for him on the Mainland.
After Li Shaoyuan got home, his sister Li Huiling, who was also studying at Hong Kong University and whose English name was Helen, hurriedly took his backpack: “Bro, how was it? Did you get Professor Lin’s signature for me?”
Li Shaoyuan handed her the inaugural issue of New Progress in Mathematics printed with Lin Ran’s Fermat’s Conjecture proof paper, “Here, I troubled Professor Lin to sign the title page.”
Li Huiling opened it and saw Lin Ran’s two big characters prominently written there. She screamed excitedly: “Thanks, bro! You really are my dear brother!
Now those bitches will die of jealousy?
I told you to invite Professor Lin to our house for dinner; did you tell him?”
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, but not Li Chaoren’s Li Family; it was the Li Family of East Asia Bank founder Li Guanchun.
For them, being able to arrange a marriage alliance with Lin Ran would absolutely count as a top choice.
Moreover, an old-school family like Li Guanchun’s clearly understood the value of Professor Horkheimer’s disciple, and also the influence of the Frankfurt School in America, England, and the entire Western world.
The point of being Professor Horkheimer’s disciple was publicly acknowledged by Horkheimer himself in an interview.
Whether it was Lin Ran himself or the Frankfurt School behind him, it was enough to make Hong Kong’s old-school families extremely tempted.
This was the value.
However, on the first day of the entire seminar there were 50 people, 47 on the second day, 40 on the third day; the number kept decreasing.
A week later, only 20 people persisted in attending the seminar; the number had decreased by more than half.
Li Shaoyuan, who prided himself as a genius, couldn’t hold on either, because he really couldn’t understand Lin Ran’s content; he just sat there dryly, sitting for a whole day.
It was really too torturous.
Lin Ran had already reached symmetry and extremal research; Li Shaoyuan felt like he was listening to a heavenly book.
Even Chen Jingrun found it strenuous, because it had already entered the core of the calculus of variations.
On the surface it was symmetry and extremal research, but the core was the calculus of variations.
Lin Ran packaged possible perturbation terms in aerospace with string vibration.
He packaged Noether’s theorem with symmetry as the mathematical law of nature.
He analogized missile trajectory with the motion of a pendulum.
The students present only found it obscure and hard to understand.
Hong Kong media reported extensively on this, but they didn’t criticize Lin Ran; instead, they praised him, saying a master was indeed a master.
When your reputation is prominent, your problems are not problems at all; instead, they are a display of ability.
The world is so wondrous.
When the lectures entered the third week and started on extremal problems combining calculus of variations and group theory, Lin Ran seized the opportunity when 13 of the remaining 14 students went to the bathroom.
Only Chen Dehui, alias of Chen Jingrun, was sitting in his seat frantically taking notes; he quietly walked to his side and said in a low voice:
“These are actually all related to intercontinental missile optimization.”
