A speck of dust on the star.

There was a math seminar in Beijing at that time.

One day, the famous mathematician Hua received a letter from a young teacher in an ordinary middle school.

The main idea of the letter is: I read your book "On Stacked Prime Numbers" and found it well written. But after repeated accounting, I found that one problem was miscalculated, which is like casting a dust on the stars. I hope you can correct it.

Hua read the letter and opened the book. Another calculation, really wrong. He was full of praise: "Great. His opinion is completely correct. He has a high talent. "

Hua read the letter at the mathematical research meeting and invited the young people who wrote it to attend the meeting. The young man was Chen Jingrun, and later he became a famous mathematician.

In this way, Hua found a rare talent from his own mistakes.

Extended data:

Course of heap-based prime number theory

When China discovered Chen Jingrun, it was because Chen Jingrun found a mistake in the theory of overlapping prime numbers written in China and wrote to him. At that time, Chen Jingrun was still a nobody. According to the statement here, it is a "folk researcher".

The representative work "On Prime Numbers of Heaps" which came to China later systematically summarized, developed and perfected Hardy's circle method, vinogradov's triangle sum estimation method and his own method. Since its publication more than 40 years ago, its main achievements still occupy the leading position in the world, and it has been translated into Russia, Hungary, Japan, Germany and English, becoming one of the classic works of number theory in the 20th century.

Baidu Encyclopedia-Stacked Prime Theory