Zhang was born in Shanghai, 1955. When he was thirteen, the Zhang family moved to Beijing. Because of the particularity of that era, Zhang's parents were separated and sent to two farms. When Zhang was fifteen, he followed his mother. When he got to the farm, he couldn't study any more, because studying on the farm would be stopped by others, which he thought was a bad behavior. Fortunately, this period did not last long. A few years later, Zhang returned to Beijing, but only as a worker.
If his life goes on like this, he may be good at it, but Zhang doesn't want to. He loves learning. He wanted to study in Peking University, so he spent several months relearning all the physics and chemistry in high school. Of course, there is not enough time, so he must learn these two courses well. At the age of 23, Zhang successfully entered the Department of Mathematics in Peking University through self-study.
His fascination with mathematics is innate, and he didn't really teach him much when his parents didn't go to the farm before. My mother works in an office. Although my father is a professor of electrical engineering, he has been busy with his work. When Zhang was a child, he began to teach himself things related to mathematics. Even if he interrupted his studies halfway, Zhang didn't want to give up mathematics. Later, he recalled, I tried to solve the problem by myself because no one could help me.
With his perseverance, Zhang will always be ahead in mathematics and will not lag behind others. At the age of nine, Zhang began to study such mathematical problems as Goldbach conjecture. He thinks that the biggest feeling of learning mathematics is that mathematics is beautiful and worth his life. But his later life was not easy. 1985, Zhang went to America. His teacher, Ding, a famous mathematician, attached great importance to him and invited him back to Peking University as a professor many times after he graduated.
At that time, for various reasons, it was difficult for Zhang to find a job in the United States, and universities were unwilling to accept him as a professor. In order to make a living, he has done many things, such as washing dishes in restaurants, working as a waiter and so on. When talking about why he didn't listen to Ding, someone said this. He doesn't want to go back to China until he succeeds. Even though life was so hard, Zhang never gave up his passion for mathematics.
In May 20 13, he made a major breakthrough in his research. He proved a weakened form of the conjecture of twin prime numbers, and found that there are infinitely many prime numbers with the difference less than 70 million. This important problem has not been substantially promoted by mathematicians before. Zhang Mai made a revolutionary step. He is nearly sixty years old. It's over. This year, I won several awards in the United States.
In fact, he has been suffering from what he has now for many years, but he has not given up. Most people didn't expect that this man, who is nearly sixty years old and has hardly published any professional papers, turned out to be the key figure to solve one of the most famous conjectures in mathematics-the twin prime conjecture. Now Zhang is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 20 18, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Asian Engineers Association of America.