Current location - Training Enrollment Network - Mathematics courses - Maynard or Zhang, who is better?
Maynard or Zhang, who is better?
The first mathematician in China to win the Fields Prize, and the Fields Prize was awarded to a mathematician in China.

College entrance examination news 2022-10-18 00: 09: 35 web

The richness of Yiting comes from Orpheus Temple.

Quantum bit | WeChat official account QbitAI

Wear white shirts and jeans every day. To concentrate, don't walk and don't wear glasses. ...

However, he is sociable and can "completely" become an adult at the age of 3. Not only did you study well, but you also filmed well.

Have you ever seen a mathematician like this?

He is James Maynard, a professor at Oxford University who just won the Fields Prize in July this year.

Previously, Zhang's twin prime number conjecture optimization became famous in World War I, and even China's mathematical genius praised him.

Now, he has won the New Vision Award for Mathematics under the Scientific Breakthrough Award in 2023, and pocketed the prize of $6,543,800.

At the age of 35, he won numerous awards for his amazing achievements in the field of number theory. He is young and famous, and his future is uncertain.

But interestingly, unlike many talented mathematicians and scientists in our stereotype, he has a very distinct personality.

Although he has a genius quirk, it will be harmonious to join the group of "ordinary people".

What kind of mathematician is this?

Maynard was born in London on 1987.

He received his doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University, which ranks first in the world, and is currently a professor at the university. He completed his bachelor's and master's degrees at Cambridge University.

The story begins at the age of three.

That year, the judges came to his house to give the children a routine intelligence test, but they didn't expect to be teased by the "kid".

Maynard said that the test questions given by the evaluator were so simple that they were "stupid".

Therefore, when the evaluator pointed to the cow and asked what animal it was, he deliberately answered "sheep" and observed her reaction.

Then, before the exam was over, Maynard announced the end himself, picked up Lego and began to play.

The incompetent evaluator said to his mother:

Your child has no rules and may get into trouble after school.

As a result, Maynard brought this character to school.

On one occasion, his physics teacher only wrote the correct answer, but only scored 1/3 for the answer without writing process.

Maynard thinks this grading standard is ridiculous, and simply protests when answering questions without writing the process (of course, the results are all right).

In this regard, his teacher has long said that there is nothing he can do.

Maynard's evaluation of himself is the same. I am a "nuisance" who always asks "why" and only does what I want to do.

Later, after graduating from Ph.D., he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Montreal. When his tutor warned him not to study prime numbers, he didn't listen at all (because mathematicians have been puzzled for centuries).

But it turns out that his strength allows him to be so "willful".

Maynard won this new vision prize for solving the most difficult and simplest problems because of his "contribution in number theory analysis, especially in the distribution of prime numbers".

When it comes to the distribution of prime numbers, we must mention the research that made him famous. This story can be said to be full of twists and turns.

Thousands of years ago, we knew that prime numbers are infinite, but when these prime numbers are arranged on the axis, there is no very clear law.

"Generally speaking, the interval between prime numbers is wider and wider along the axis," Maynard said. However, according to the prediction of twin prime numbers, even if the interval between prime numbers is greatly increasing, few prime numbers will be very close to each other. Understanding the prime interval is the most basic problem to understand the distribution of prime numbers. "

Mathematicians believe that they can find an infinite number of twin prime numbers. This is the "twin prime conjecture", which sounds simple, but no one can prove it for hundreds of years.

Maynard suspects that improving the method of filtering prime numbers described in the paper 10 years ago may find a breakpoint.

However, while Maynard was still studying, Zhang, an unknown mathematician at that time, came out. First of all, he proved that there are infinite prime pairs whose difference is less than 70 million.

On one occasion, Zhang said that he was at the forefront and won the Cole Prize, the highest prize in number theory.

Only six months later, Maynard, 26, also produced his research results. He proposed a completely independent and more powerful solution, thus reducing the number to 600.

However, just before he published his paper, a terrible thing happened to young mathematicians:

He and his teachers all know that Tao Zhexuan, the prestigious Fields Prize winner at that time, had almost the same result on the same issue.

According to QuantaMagazine, after reading Maynard's proof method, Tao Zhexuan thought it was more concise than himself.

Out of regret for his talent, Tao Zhexuan gave up the opportunity to personally publish this research with him, and didn't let his reputation cover up the achievements of young mathematicians.

Maynard also proved that Tao Zhexuan didn't mistake one for another through his own efforts.

As a number theorist, he has been devoted to studying these most difficult and simple problems. In addition to the "prediction of twin prime numbers" listed above, his record also attacked the prediction of Du Fen Schaefer, a mathematical problem that has puzzled everyone for 80 years.

Du Fen-Schaefer conjecture is an important conjecture about the approximation of the measurement output diagram put forward by physicist Richard Du Fen and mathematician Albert Schaefer in 194 1.

As we all know, most real numbers are irrational numbers, such as 2, which cannot be expressed by fractions.

In this prediction, it is assumed that f:NR0 is a real number function with a positive value, only if the series.

He will have differences. (q0,) q is an Euler function, which indicates the number of positive integers with mass less than q) Irrational numbers have an infinite rational number, which satisfies the inequality |-(p/q) | f) q)/q.

This proof process puzzled mathematicians for several years, and Maynard and Dimitrisz Ricoulleau of the University of Montreal broke through it.

Carolos is on the left and Maynard is on the right. In their proof, a chart was drawn with the denominator. Draw the denominator on the point on the diagram. When two points have many same prime factors, connect them with a line.

In this way, the structure of the graph symbolizes the overlap between irrational numbers with approximate denominators. It is difficult to measure the overlap directly.

Therefore, they proved the correctness of Du Fen Schaefer's prediction.

Quantum magazine called this achievement "one of the rarest feats in the field of mathematics". Because "they gave the final answer to the basic questions in their research field".

Because these research results are so excellent, Maynard was praised and became a top scholar in the field of number theory.

Professors at Oxford University rated his career trajectory as "a sharp rise".

Glanville, the author of a book on number theory analysis, said indignantly: "Because of him, I have written more than 150 pages, and the progress has obviously slowed down."

But it is worth mentioning that in James Maynard's family, everyone except him is in the humanities-his parents are both language teachers and his brother is studying history.

When he was a graduate student at Oxford University, he began to show extraordinary mathematical ability.

When I was a doctor, my tutor Roger Heath Brown once complained:

I'm not instructing him, I'm cooperating with him! I have never taken such a student there.

Seeing this, everyone has to admit this absurd mathematical genius.

But in fact, the stereotype of genius rarely appears on him, except that he likes to wear the same clothes almost every day. It is a white shirt and jeans.

Hymn once everyone who went to listen to his speech was very naughty. Everyone was wearing a Maynard suit.

The opposite of genius, being good at communication, often taking off her glasses and walking can reflect the "ordinary people" side of the maid.

For example, in the difficult problem of predicting twin prime numbers, when he gives a smaller prime number gap with a more powerful method, he is often unconsciously worried when he is excited: "Did he calculate it himself?"

However, he said, this fear greatly stimulated his work efficiency.

For example, unlike many introverted talented scientists, Maynard is actually very sociable and often chats and laughs in foreign exchanges.

Colleagues also gave him warm, interesting and outgoing comments.

Just before the disaster in COVID-19, he took coffee beans to the office every day after lunch to make coffee for other number theorists.

But on the way from home to the office, he usually chooses to take off his glasses. Because he thinks fuzzy vision can make him concentrate on math problems.

As a result, he met his wife and passed by.

Yes, Maynard is married. The other half is a doctor from Oxford University. He was also promoted to "dad" this year.

Plus Maynard's life is not just math.

His hobbies are dinosaurs, astronomy and geology.

He said that in recent years, he often travels around the world and attends various conferences, so he likes photography.

As one of Maynard's photographs, he has been to Hong Kong. As a person who doesn't like getting up early, he can break the routine and shoot the sunrise.

About filming, he is now close to infatuation.

Because he doesn't like anything at all, if he likes it, he will delve into it to the end.

As his father said, Maynard won't give up until he reaches the limit of his ability.

However, mathematics has not yet reached this step.

Secondly, I am also curious about what direction this special genius will continue to study and achieve the same excellent results.

In this regard, Maynard himself said: "Everything is possible.