Professor Grothendieck’s tombstone was situated in a low-key corner at the cemetery. It was covered with dust, and it looked like no one had visited it for a long time.
Grothendieck no longer contacted people in his later years. Except for a few friends who knew where he lived, most people didn’t even know where his tombstone was.
According to this old priest, except for the last two months of his life, Grothendieck would come here to pray almost every weekend.
Lu Zhou nodded toward the babbling priest. He bent down and placed the flower bouquet on the tombstone.
Lu Zhou gave a blessing to this great scholar in his heart, thanking him for leaving behind the precious notebooks. He then turned around and walked away.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to stay here for too long.
It was just that he didn’t want Director Giacobino to have to stand here and pretend to act sad for any longer.
In fact, there was nothing to be sad about it. It was human nature to be born, get old, get sick, and die. Being able to choose the life you want was something most people were envious of. Him isolating himself was a great loss for the mathematics community, but for him, it was a blessing.
After Lu Zhou left the cemetery, he followed the old priest to his home, which was not far from the church. He saw the remaining pile of notes in the priest’s garage.
Yes, that was right; an entire pile of materials and notes.
Apparently, in the 18th century when academic exchanges were not as common, most European mathematicians relied on letters and manuscripts to “publish” their research results. Lu Zhou did not expect to see such a “primitive” communication method in the 21st century.
Even though the notes were stacked in the form of a pile, it was obvious that the old man took some time to separate the drafts and the formal notes. He even covered them with a plastic sheet to block dust.
Seeing how good the preservation of these notes were, Lu Zhou fulfilled his promise and donated one million euros to the St. Lizier Church. He treated this as a storage fee for the priest who kept these notes for the past eight years.
Lu Zhou took out his mobile phone and called Chen Yushan. He asked her to help contact the local logistics companies in Paris and entrust them to collect the notes and materials and ship them back to China. After that, he got back in the car and went back to Paris.
Star Sky Technology offered a price to a local logistics company that they could not refuse. After the logistics company came to the town of Saint-Lizier and collected the precious notes, the package was shipped on a dedicated plane the next day.
When Lu Zhou arrived back at the hotel in the evening, he quickly ate his dinner in the cafeteria, then returned to his room. He spread out Professor Grothendieck’s special notebook on the table and enthusiastically turned the page.
“A problem that even Professor Grothendieck couldn’t solve? Let me take a look…”
According to rumors, before living in isolation, Professor Grothendieck and his student Deligne had been devoted to researching Riemann’s hypothesis and its application in the field of algebraic geometry. The famous Weil conjecture was solved by Professor Deligne during this period of time.
If Professor Grothendieck was still researching mathematics after isolating himself, there was a high probability that the problem he was researching was Riemann’s hypothesis.
However, while Lu Zhou thought he would read some research notes on Riemann’s hypothesis, when he read the words on the page, he had a strange look in his eyes.
“… What is this?”
Motive theory?
No!
Although it also used abstract numbers, it was something completely different from motive theory.
Lu Zhou turned a page and continued to read. He soon realized that the things recorded in this notebook were completely beyond his expectations. This wasn’t about Riemann’s hypothesis at all, but rather… a mathematics proposition he had never even heard of.
Professor Grothendieck already gave a method of proof for the first proposition. As for the second proposition, it seemed like he wasn’t able to solve it.
Lu Zhou was interested in this problem that troubled Professor Grothendieck. He picked up a ballpoint pen off his desk and pulled out a piece of draft paper. He transformed proposition 2 using his unified theory of algebra and geometry.
However, as soon as he completed the transformation, he was astonished.
Is this another form of expression for Riemann’s hypothesis?!
Lu Zhou quickly turned to the back of the notebook. When he read the last few pages, he sighed in relief.
“… Obviously Grothendieck didn’t prove it.”
His intuition told him that this proposition was the same as Riemann’s hypothesis, but Grothendieck did not give a reasonable proof.
After all, the unified theory of algebra and geometry was only invented last year.
He used a pencil and lightly drew a tick on proposition 2, indicating that this proposition had already been solved. Lu Zhou looked at the calculations and fell into deep thought.
“… This is definitely more than just some mathematics problems.”
These complex propositions could be published as official mathematics conjectures.
Regardless of the academic value itself, in terms of difficulty, they were no less easy than the Millennium Prize Problems. It didn’t seem like something an ordinary person could solve.
If Professor Grothendieck wanted to find an answer, he could make these propositions public.
Now with the existence of the Internet, he could even publish these problems anonymously.
Making it public would greatly increase the chances of someone solving the problem.
Lu Zhou tapped his pen on the draft paper.
Suddenly, he remembered a rumor.
According to a friend of Professor Grothendieck, in Grothendieck’s later years, his mentality was in a rather unstable state, and he was addicted to the idea of a “devil”.
For example, he believed that it was the devil who turned the beautiful speed of light, which was supposed to be 300,000 kilometers per second, to the ugly 299,792.458 kilometers per second.
It was not clear why an outstanding mathematician would care about the physical measurements of the universe, but there had to be a reason behind this.
This retired pope of mathematics suddenly wrote a personal letter to his former student Professor Ilussi in January 2010, requesting that all of his texts published after his “disappearance” to not be reprinted.
This incident caused a commotion at the time since the books “Fondements de la Géométrie Algébrique” and “Éléments de Géométrie Algébrique” were the cornerstones of the algebraic geometry field. However, Grothendieck’s request made it more difficult for people to obtain these textbooks.
Lu Zhou thought back to the words in the letter Grothendieck wrote to him. He didn’t believe that a mentally unstable person could write those words.
He believed that there was something else that happened to this scholar, something he did not know about.
For example…
Lu Zhou’s pupils contracted. He had a vague idea in his mind.
“… Physics governs the law of the universe, mathematics is the universal language.”
Lu Zhou looked at the mathematical calculations in the notes. He felt like a light bulb just went off in his head, and his pupils lit up.
If I’m correct…
Then this isn’t a simple mathematical proposition…
It’s an entire language!