Things are very difficult in the beginning.
Every weekend, Lin Zhaoxi would go to Hongjing Library, which was her and Pei Zhi's regular schedule. Lao Lin is sometimes there and sometimes not.
When Lao Lin is not around, Lin Zhaoxi will put down the advanced mathematics study at hand and start to scurry among the bookshelves.
The rows of bookshelves where she stands the most are computer and mathematics. She occasionally browses the bookshelves of transportation, looking at a lot of traffic laws, road construction foundations, and bridge structures.
She didn't really know what she was looking for.
When you have an idea, you knock on the door and go in. The feeling of standing inside is completely different from that of being outside, and you will find that you have actually entered a space where you can't see your fingers.
Because of the darkness, she loses the comparison between big and small, and she feels smaller and smaller, like a speck of dust; and this space is so vast and boundless, like the universe.
If it was her before, after she had an idea, she would give up after thinking about it, and would not really take action. But if you do it all over again, if you still dare not try because you are afraid of not being successful, you will look like a fool.
She doesn't know much, but at least she knows that although the existing knowledge of this world is vast, most of it is hidden in the library and compiled into books by knowledgeable people.
When you cast your net, you should always catch something.
Therefore, she will flip through every book on the shelf, observe the table of contents and preface, and mark down the bibliography and information she thinks are useful.
This is a stupid way. Generally speaking, even the Hongjing Library has a huge collection of books, and it will be difficult to sort out the information after a certain amount of information. So she seemed to be caught in a spider's web for a while, always thinking that everything she saw was useful, but she couldn't classify it clearly.
She felt that each item was useful, but she couldn't tell whether it was really useful.
When she was most troubled, she felt that the "... ..." after those book catalogs were like sticky spider webs.
She must have been so anxious during that time that Lao Lin couldn't help asking her: "What's wrong with you recently, is calculus so difficult?"
Lin Zhaoxi pretended nothing of the matter: "It's okay, I didn't find it so difficult after learning it."
"That's why, there are too many seniors who have confessed to Pei Zhi?"
Lin Zhaoxi: "..."
Lao Lin was wearing an apron, patted her shoulder with a spatula, and said earnestly: "Dad can't help you in this regard."
The more relaxed and humorous Lao Lin was, and he didn't care about everything, the tighter Lin Zhaoxi's heart tightened.
"I need a little guidance," she said.
"Guidelines for what?"
Lin Zhaoxi really wanted to say, "I want to know how to save you", but if it was Lao Lin, he might say "no need to save you", and the reason why you don't need to be saved is probably one of "life and death are life experiences". Class special doesn't matter.
So she bowed her head and thought for a while, and decided to change the question.
"Is there a moment in your life when you have no direction?"
"I don't understand your question."
"For example, when you were in elementary school, you made up your mind to solve a particularly difficult math problem, similar to the Millennium Problem, and then you found that you had no direction and were purely dreaming."
"The millennium problem, in fact, has accumulated a lot of previous research, so it will not be without direction, at most it will take some time to explore."
"You don't have that kind of time when you are faced with a huge proposition, and you are at a loss when you see a black hand in front of you?"
"Yes, I have."
"when?"
"When I knew I had a daughter."
Lao Lin was very calm.
The weather was warm, they were sitting under the flower trellis, and the grass was growing in the small courtyard, but Lin Zhaoxi's nose was sore: "Don't be sensational all of a sudden!"
"real."
After Lao Lin finished speaking, he turned and went into the kitchen to cook, muttering in his mouth: "And the more you feed, the bigger it gets."
—
Lin Zhaoxi later thought that Lao Lin probably hadn't lied either.
For him, the daughter who fell from the sky is probably more difficult to deal with than those math problems.
She is so troublesome, eats so much, not only needs his education, but always needs his help. Whether it's chasing boys or studying, or even what she eats every day, she can't do without him.
Although Lao Lin didn't say anything, in a math cram class on a weekend, Lao Lin asked the students by the window to close the curtains. Projection equipment is newly installed in the classroom, which completely enters the look of the new era.
The curtain was lowered and then lit up. Everyone was surprised to find that Lao Lin was actually going to show them a film.
"Ms. Lin, don't we have class today, do we want to watch a movie?" the students asked excitedly.
"In class, you can also attend class while watching a movie. This is an educational class that directly hits the soul." Lao Lin fiddled with the device, and a line of words appeared on the screen.
"Wow, teacher is so fashionable!"
"Advance with the times and advance with the times."
Lao Lin retreated to the end of the classroom. In the dim light, he leaned against the blackboard, folded his arms, and looked up at the curtain.
The curtain suddenly turned black, with only a metronome swinging, Lin Zhaoxi knew that the film had started.
At the beginning, she didn't know what the film was about, until the soft and shy voice narrated.
—Perhaps the most appropriate metaphor for me to describe my experience in mathematics research is to enter a dark mansion. Because, when you go into a dark room where you can't see your fingers, you'll stumble across the furniture, and gradually you'll know where each piece of furniture is, and after six months, you'll eventually find the switch and turn on the light. Suddenly the light illuminates everything and you can see exactly where you are.
That's a long narrative.
But the surroundings became quiet. After the curtains were drawn, there was only a little light in the classroom. Every child looked up, watching the story told on the projection screen.
It all started with a joke by the mathematician Fermat more than 300 years ago.
When Fermat was reading "Arithmetic", he wrote a lot of notes in the margins of the book, just like what happened to those books in the library of Sanwei University. In the margin of the eighth page, he wrote an extremely short note that became the most difficult mathematical problem in the world.
In short, after observation, he believes that, except for the Pythagorean theorem that is x^2+y^2=z^2, there is no integer solution n such that x^n+y^n=z^ n.
He even left a passage in a very mischievous way, saying, "I am sure I have discovered a wonderful proof of this, but unfortunately the space here is too small to write."
Later, when Mr. Andrew Wiles, the protagonist of the documentary they are watching now, really proved this simple conjecture, people realized that the passage left by Mr. Fermat may be a complete hoax. Because the level of mathematics development at that time was not enough for him to find such a "beautiful" solution.
The subsequent narration is slightly complicated. Of course, the director of the documentary has tried his best to make the proof process easy to understand, so he only adopts the method of telling the frame, and outlines the difficult process of Mr. Andrew Wiles proving Fermat’s last theorem. But those mathematical terms that are far beyond their comprehension are still confusing.
There are whispers in the classroom.
A lot of people are asking "what is this" or "what is that"...
They don't know what those things are, but they know very well that behind this seemingly structure is a complex problem far beyond their imagination.
But when the difficult demonstration process continued to advance, and the mathematician finally stood in front of the blackboard and explained his entire proof process to more than 200 mathematicians in the audience, their small classroom became completely silent again.
It was Cambridge University on June 23, 1993. The mathematician kept writing calculation formulas on the blackboard. Half an hour later, he put down the chalk, and finally he said: "I have proved it, I think I can stop up".
I can stop now.
This has been a difficult problem for hundreds of years, and it is here.
There is only one photo and the background sound of thunderous applause left on the screen.
Although there were some twists and turns in the follow-up argument, the classroom at that time was extremely quiet, only the beam of light cast by the projector was left, dust was flying, and there were bits and pieces of light.
Looking at the mathematician in front of the blackboard with a bright smile, Lin Zhaoxi suddenly thought, this is probably the moment every mathematician dreams of.
When he was a child, Mr. Andrew Wiles happened to discover Fermat's Last Theorem while doing puzzles in the library. For 30 years after that, it was his dream to solve it, and he actually did.
Lin Zhaoxi couldn't help wondering, in Lao Lin's mind, was there such a problem that he dreamed of solving? If so, what was it
She turned her head and looked at the people in front of the blackboard, and she found that she never knew this.