Chapter 38: I Am Your Dad
“Everyone, the basics have been covered pretty much. Next, we’ll start on some truly challenging content.
Today’s courses end here. Feel free to raise any questions anytime.”
He handed over the full recording of Bystander to Meng Xiaodong. Despite her repeatedly saying no reward was needed, Lin Ran insisted on giving it. The next day, he continued teaching the Hong Kong University classmates as usual.
The huge lecture hall was left with only eight people, and six more left one after another from the back.
Among the remaining eight, those who persisted were partly because they had some mathematics talent themselves, and also because they wanted to gain something from Lin Ran.
There was Chen Jingrun from China, and naturally students representing England too.
Besides this purpose, there were also those hoping to continue advanced studies in the field of mathematics, hoping that by persisting through a summer, after finishing the seminar here with Lin Ran, they could be favored by him to pursue his PhD.
Or to get a recommendation letter from Lin Ran.
For the current Hong Kong mathematics desert, getting Lin Ran’s recommendation letter meant being able to apply to top schools.
Li Shaoyuan, from Hong Kong’s elite families, naturally didn’t care about Lin Ran’s recommendation letter; they could get Justices of the Peace or even native English nobility to help write recommendation letters.
But for middle-class or ordinary well-off family students, Lin Ran was already the best connection they could access.
Lin Ran’s recommendation letter wasn’t just useful in the mathematics field; hot majors like economy and finance were equally applicable.
Among those present, the only one truly caring about mathematics itself was probably Chen Jingrun.
But after these days’ turmoil, Chen Jingrun was a bit distracted too.
In the early morning yesterday, while he was sleeping soundly in his tin shack in Sham Shui Po, there was a knock at the door outside:
“Open up, I’m your dad!”
Chen Jingrun was momentarily dazed, thinking that due to no rest at all lately, his spirit was hallucinating problems.
When did he suddenly get a dad.
But moments later he reacted, combining the voice outside; the least likely situation from the previous training had occurred.
Chen Jingrun quickly got up and opened the door. Sure enough, as he expected, standing outside was Section Chief Zhang, who looked ten years older compared to in Yangcheng.
“Dad,” Chen Jingrun’s voice was dry, “how did you come.”
“Had to come, no choice; gotta come work. Hard to find work over in To Kwa Wan, the previous factory closed and wouldn’t let me stay in the dorm, walked over overnight, no work means no food.” Section Chief Zhang gestured to go inside to talk.
Bystander was passed back by Zhang Shizhao, including playing this song when Lin Ran accepts an interview on Hong Kong Radio, to make those across the river realize it was almost impossible to persuade Lin Ran to return to China.
So the entire strategy had to change.
And Section Chief Zhang coming was the most direct embodiment of the strategy change.
On the surface, they were chatting about coming here to work.
“Compared to To Kwa Wan, Sham Shui Po really has many more plastic factories and textile factories, they’re all recruiting lately, Dad, you can go try.”
In reality, they were communicating with paper and pen:
“Your task has changed. What you need to do is see if you can stay by Lin’s side and become his student.
If not, see if you can settle for the next best, go to Columbia University Mathematics Department to pursue a PhD.”
“What if that doesn’t work either?”
“If that doesn’t work either, then bide your time for another opportunity.
Additionally, what you need to do is continue cracking Lin’s mathematical model. Here are some missile-related information that might help you; read it quickly, destroy all of it after reading.
Afterwards, you just need to hand over the information you have to me.”
Chen Jingrun, who was originally supposed to return to work after training in Hong Kong, not only had his task changed, but his life took a 180-degree turn.
Chen Jingrun, who stayed up all night yesterday reading information and suddenly gained a dad out of nowhere, could persist without collapsing at the desk and barely keep up with Lin Ran’s content; that was already very difficult.
“Professor Lin, about how harmonic analysis combines with”
“Professor Lin, the stricter spectral condition for the densely defined closed operator you mentioned here”
Chen Jingrun persisted until the end, finally obtaining the only chance after coming to Lin Ran’s seminar to have direct dialogue with Lin Ran when no one else was around.
“What you’re asking about is actually regarding the definition of holomorphic semigroups. This should count as the most cutting-edge content. Not long ago, Langlands systematically analyzed its generation and analytic properties in his paper titled ‘Some Holomorphic Semi-Groups’.
You can think of holomorphic semigroups as a class of mappings from open regions of the complex plane to Banach algebras, mainly satisfying two properties: semigroup property and holomorphicity.” Lin Ran said.
Such content, no wonder other students left the classroom; staying without understanding wasn’t helpful.
And for the England side’s people, one person staying in the classroom would seem too conspicuous.
At the end, seeing Lin Ran not bringing it up proactively, Chen Jingrun thought today’s exchange was limited to the academic level.
However, today’s meeting clearly wasn’t over. Lin Ran pulled out a thick stack of magazines from his briefcase:
“Dehui, this is the Journal of Applied Mathematics and Physics published by the America Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics over the past five years. You can take it to look through; I think it will help you understand this content better.”
This was the real main event today.
After Lin Ran finished speaking and handed over the magazines, as Chen Jingrun took them feeling his hand sink, he only heard Professor Lin lean close to his ear and whisper fiercely:
“Remember! 56-6-12, 58-10-3, 59-1-3. Combining these three papers, you can research the Monte Carlo method yourselves!”
After saying that, Lin Ran resumed his previous sitting posture, sat in front of the podium, and smilingly asked: “Dehui, any more questions?”
Chen Jingrun was dazed: “No, none.” His brain was fully focused on memorizing what the other had just said.
Correct, Lin Ran’s trip to Hong Kong had never been just about solving one or two problems; what he wanted was to leave a little kindling for China, even just a bit.
Soon, China’s academic exchanges with the outside world would completely stop.
This stagnation wasn’t just in personnel exchanges; even academic journals would stop.
France wouldn’t let overseas Chinese transport Nature and Science magazines to China.
In Hong Kong alone, in 1963, over 13,000 academic journals were blocked from entering China.
In the first five years of the 1960s, 42 overseas Chinese were prosecuted for passing technical data to East University.
This year, the Soviet Union’s International Scientific Abstracts would stop supply, and China would lose the last systematic path to contact Western cutting-edge science-related content.
These are external factors; external factors might increase the difficulty of obtaining it, but internal factors are what truly cause you not to proactively seek it.
Also this year, the Foreign Languages Press disbanded, leaving only seven people responsible for translating English science and technology articles.
So what Lin Ran wanted to do was to leave even a little kindling.
