Chapter 71: Unmatched Grandmaster Style
Despite the China side having done sufficiently thorough work on Chen Jingrun’s growth background.
But it was still not enough.
Some more essential things are very hard to cover up.
Harvey Cohen had some guesses about the origin of this young man of Chinese descent named Chen Dehui; he suspected that the other party came from China.
The other party’s foundation in the number theory field was very solid, with unique insights into the sieve method, but knew too narrowly, and had a fairly serious disconnect from contemporary mathematics.
Just from the interview and usual conversations, Harvey Cohen felt that the other party’s technical skills were very similar to those of the mathematician peer Hua Luogeng who had already returned to China.
In the 1940s, Hua Luogeng was a visiting scholar at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, and later served as a visiting scholar at the University of Illinois for two years before returning to China; Harvey Cohen had interactions with Hua Luogeng at academic conferences.
Being similar to Hua Luogeng technically was one aspect, and another point was wanting to use the sieve method to solve the Goldbach Conjecture.
The sieve method mentioned by Chen Jingrun clearly had the shadow of the Hungarian mathematics master Alfred Rényi.
Alfred Rényi had already used the sieve method to study the Goldbach Conjecture as early as 1948; he used the large sieve method to prove that there exists a number K such that every even number is the sum of K primes and the product of at most that number of primes.
Chen Jingrun’s subsequent Chen’s Theorem was a further strengthening of Alfred Rényi’s this work.
Obviously, Chen Jingrun had access to Alfred Rényi’s work and had a deep understanding and mastery of it, because Hungary and China currently belonged to the same camp, and their academic-related achievements could flow to each other.
This was just like in wuxia novels, where every move and stance of yours could reveal which sect you came from; you wear a mask and try every means to conceal your sect and origin, but top masters can still see through it at a glance.
Mathematics was the same.
You can perfect your identity background, but the traces in mathematical techniques cannot be concealed in front of a master.
In other words, this was also Lin Ran’s fault; during the Hong Kong seminar, Lin Ran didn’t teach much number theory, but lectured entirely on harmonic analysis and algebraic geometry, always trying every means to stuff his own goods to Chen Jingrun, causing Chen Jingrun to expose himself immediately in front of Harvey Cohen.
Fortunately, when Lin Ran helped Chen Jingrun select a mentor, he was very careful in picking and choosing; Harvey Cohen wouldn’t care whether you came from China, and he even wanted to actively help Chen Jingrun cover it up.
Letting Chen Jingrun make up for the shortcomings in other fields was actually hinting to him to learn more martial arts from other sects; the master can help you cover it up, but if others see through it, they may not help you cover it up.
“Also, Chen, the sieve method is a very useful tool; Brun used it to prove the reciprocal convergence of twin prime sums, and Selberg used it to achieve more precise upper bound estimates.
But it has very obvious limitations; on one hand, the sieve method relies on combinatorial techniques rather than profound function analysis, and it is a bit too crude.
Do you understand? It is hard to control the error term; like if we handle prime number problems, the error term will accumulate as your sieving range expands.
I do not deny that it is a very effective tool, but it needs to be combined with more methods to play a greater role.
Like Selberg’s sieve method, which used analytic tools; he introduced the Riemann ζ function and Dirichlet L-functions, and utilized square sum analysis techniques to optimize the upper bound.
It needs to be combined with other mathematics to enhance the power of the sieve method; including number theory, you also need to read more frontier papers and improve the methods.”
Harvey Cohen had quite a flavor of earnest persuasion; his subtext was actually, learn more other martial arts to cover up your origin for me.
It was also limited because everyone had just met; Harvey Cohen couldn’t directly point out his real thoughts.
Lin Ran was about to take office at the White House; pointing it out now might cause some trouble.
Harvey Cohen didn’t care at all whether Lin Ran worked for China; from the Manhattan Project to NASA, were there few top scientists in America who worked for the Soviet Union?
Even if Lin Ran really worked for China, so what?
However, Harvey Cohen also didn’t think Lin Ran really worked for China; he could smell the flavor of China from Chen Jingrun’s moves, but from Lin Ran, he could really only smell the flavor of a master.
Every move and stance was natural and perfect, with the demeanor of a sect leader, unmatched.
When everyone was holding the seminar earlier and said “submit,” it sounded a bit exaggerated, but Harvey Cohen understood very well that it was actually not exaggerated at all.
Because the most perverted thing about Randolph was that, apart from continuously producing Fields Medal level achievements, after everyone read his papers, they still couldn’t find any angles for improvement.
Generally, a master produces an achievement, and then everyone can follow that direction to make a series of achievements.
The easiest is to improve the master’s paper achievements.
Like Wiles’s Fermat’s Conjecture, which was later improved by everyone from 130 pages to 50 pages. That was also an achievement.
But Lin Ran’s papers were impeccable; the published version was already a perfect result, at least no one could find an improvement angle at present.
Additionally, Lin Ran not only solved the problem himself and created general methods, but even gave you a new conjecture.
It was truly a bit too perverted.
Therefore, at the New York number theory seminar where Lin Ran didn’t come, everyone privately discussed being astonished by Lin Ran, really unable to imagine how Göttingen would let such a talent go.
Seagull, as the former head of Göttingen and a master-level figure in the number theory field, had also come to New York before and was invited by Harvey Cohen to attend the number theory seminar, but couldn’t withstand being continuously asked why Göttingen let Lin Ran go.
Originally, Seagull planned to be a visiting scholar at Columbia University for half a year, but because he was asked speechless, he ended up staying only one month and returned to Göttingen.
It was much easier to face Döblin alone back home than to be mocked by the group in New York.
Precisely because of this, for a mathematics master who was only in his twenties, Harvey Cohen subconsciously wanted to protect him, and also didn’t believe Lin Ran was really Chinese, at most sympathizing with China.
This was extremely normal in America.
In the American academia, there were plenty of Jewish descent scientists from Germany; many also supported Germany’s development in various ways. Was it strange for someone of Chinese descent to sympathize with China and want to help?
The academic circle in the 1960s still had quite an open atmosphere.
“Appointment of Randolph Lin as Special Assistant for Aerospace Affairs
Hereby appoint Randolph Lin as Presidential Special Assistant for Aerospace Affairs, responsible for aerospace affairs. Mr. Lin will report directly to Vice President Lyndon Johnson, with duties including providing the President with aerospace-related policy suggestions, supervising the execution of NASA-related work, and participating in aerospace-related affairs.
This appointment takes effect from March 1, 1961.
Signed: John F. Kennedy
United States of America”
