1962, Zhang Shouwu, a native of Wuxing Dafan Village, Xibu Town, Shexian County, Anhui Province. He is the third child in the family, with two sisters and one brother. His family life is very poor. Besides farming, his parents also make a living by fishing and raising ducks. He liked music very much when he was a child, and his constitution was particularly poor. His parents bought him an erhu, hoping that he could join the propaganda team of the production team one day without doing farm work. But he never learned erhu after all.
"When I was in the first and second grades of primary school, I knew that I could calculate things faster than others." He said, "My father is very clever. Although he hasn't read any books, he often tells me how much this fish costs a catty after he comes back from fishing every day. I do math with my pen. In his experience, our grades were only a few cents short, so at that time, I was curious about mathematics. " When Zhang Shouwu was 7 years old, he signed up at the primary school in the village, but he went home two days later. Because his mother said that his sister and cousin were left unattended, he stayed at home for a year, taking his sister and brother with him. In the second year, I found that no one at home put ducks, so I signed up and went home to put ducks. At the end of the exam, my mother asked him to take it. He said, "How to take the exam without studying?" Zhang Shouwu goes to the same school as his 9-year-old brother, who teaches him. As a result, he "barely passed", which made him more interested in self-study. In the fourth grade of primary school, he wanted to be a mathematician, but the teacher didn't like him at that time because he was always "absent from class or late".
1976, Zhang shouwu was admitted to Shili junior high school and became more interested in mathematics. But he spent most of his time driving ducks in the fields, and his brother borrowed geometry and algebra from junior high school before the Cultural Revolution for him to learn. In less than a year, Zhang Shouwu learned these two books and was able to master and apply the knowledge skillfully. In the second day of junior high school, he began to delve into high school mathematics. The physics teacher thought he was very talented in mathematics, so he introduced him to textbooks and theoretical books about high school mathematics.
It was not until the third grade of junior high school that he went to school formally, because at that time, he began to take the senior high school entrance examination, which means that he would pass the exam when he was in junior high school, unlike his brother who was recommended to go to school. At that time, more than 100 people in the village took the exam, and 5 people were admitted to the best high school in the county-Hexian No.1 Middle School. He is one of them. Although he was the last one, it was "of course a good thing".
Zhang Shouwu started formal study in high school, but he felt that formal study was not interesting at all. "What I learned before was missed, and I learned it for the college entrance examination after high school." He said: "In high school, I had to make up for everything in Chinese and English." I now find that everything I made up at that time has been forgotten, but I remember what I saw on the ridge. "
When he was a freshman, he was fascinated by mathematics. His brother asked someone to bring him some advanced mathematics from Hefei University of Technology, and he began to teach himself advanced mathematics. In a math contest, others used skills to answer questions, but he used calculus taught by himself. The teacher found that the answers were all right, but he didn't know how to correct the paper, so he had to let him correct it himself. The teacher said to him, "You probably don't have to take math class." In high school, Zhang Shouwu was really good at math, but he failed in the college entrance examination.
"Because I don't usually eat much breakfast, my family told me to eat more during the college entrance examination. As a result, I ate too much that day and felt sleepy sitting in the examination room. At that time, the math score was 100, and there were 20 additional questions. I quickly finished the previous question, only to find that the existing one is extremely difficult and it is easy to attach it. I came out 1 hour after the three-hour exam. He said: "This price is too high, and 20 points will be gone. I got 79 points in the exam, because the official score is less than 80 points, so the scores of additional questions can't be counted. "
On the contrary, he did well in chemistry. "This is an interesting thing. I know nothing about chemistry. I haven't done the experiment. I spent a week reciting chemistry, but I got 96 points. " He really likes math, and the university volunteered to fill in the math department. At this time, he found that the mathematics department of a good university had little hope, so he decided not to go to college and wanted to pass the postgraduate self-study exam at home.
An uncle of Zhang Shouwu has cancer. He was very nervous after hearing the news. He rode a buffalo for two kilometers and came to his home. He earnestly advised him: "You are the third of the five children in the family, and you have two sisters. If you don't go to school, if you don't pass the exam next year ... "He promised to go to college, and my uncle asked him what he wanted. He said he would buy a math manual, so he gave it to him.
1980, Zhang Shouwu took a pole, a quilt made by his mother and a math manual in the quilt, and a toolbox given by another uncle who was a cobbler. With the county-funded 22 yuan travel expenses, he took the train from Maanshan to Guangzhou and reported to the Chemistry Department of Sun Yat-sen University. This university surprised him. He said, "From the countryside to the city, this is my first time to see a train, the first time to take a train, and the first time to visit a big city. I think college is very good. Everyone thinks the school food is terrible, but I think the school food is the best, much more delicious than at home. "
Zhang Shouwu was assigned to the chemistry department because of his good grades in chemistry, and his teacher liked him very much, but he was bent on learning mathematics. At this time, a classmate in the same dormitory also wanted to learn physics wholeheartedly, so they spent the whole day in the dormitory and finally came up with a trick: one pretended to be rhinitis and the other pretended to be color blind during the physical examination one or two months before their freshman year, so that they could not learn chemistry.
During the physical examination, the nurse showed Zhang Shouwu the atlas of color blindness examination. From the first page to the last page, he said he couldn't understand it. The nurse said angrily, "the last page is black and white, and there is no color at all." You are not color blind, you are blind. " He had to plead with her, saying that he really didn't want to learn chemistry, but only wanted to learn mathematics, thus becoming "color blind".
However, Zhang Shouwu's math score in the college entrance examination is only 79, and the math department is the lowest. He took the paper and explained the situation to the professor of mathematics at that time. "They accepted me, so I transferred to the Department of Mathematics." In the Department of Mathematics, Zhang Shouwu basically taught himself, mainly because he was delayed for half a semester in the Department of Chemistry, so the teacher of the Department of Mathematics gave him an unwritten policy: as long as he was admitted, he could not attend classes, hoping that he could catch up. But when he caught up quickly, the teachers forgot to cancel the policy. As a result, he is the only one in the math department who doesn't need attendance in all classes, as long as he has passed the exam. He said, "This actually gave me time to study by myself."
In the first year of college, Zhang Shouwu began to teach teachers. "This is particularly good luck, because when I first took the Advanced Algebra exam, the test paper had two parts, some of which were more abstract and some were more specific. Other students can raise specific topics, but they can't raise abstract topics. Only I can do abstract topics, not specific ones. At this time, the teacher felt very strange and asked the teaching assistant to ask me what was going on. I said, I have never studied linear algebra before, but only taught myself abstract algebra. The teacher also wants to learn abstract algebra, but he doesn't understand it, so let me learn abstract algebra from him. He gave me a book, and I gave a report to the teachers after I finished learning it. At that time, two associate professors were listening, so the two of us started a discussion class in the first year of college. This is a very lucky thing for me, because at that time, not many college students had the opportunity to give lectures to teachers. They could learn things by themselves and then tell the professors. This feeling is very different, and I learned it quickly. "
Influenced by Chen Jingrun's deeds, Zhang Shouwu became interested in number theory. After going to college, he found it difficult to further popularize Goldbach's conjecture by Huahe's method, and decided to focus on algebra, so he spent all his college time studying algebra.
In his sophomore year, his math professor heard the concept of "homology algebra" from other places, and thought it was a very important knowledge, but he couldn't understand it himself, so he asked Zhang Shou to report it after studying martial arts. So Zhang Shouwu borrowed a book on homology algebra from the library and began to study. But that's an English book. He has never studied English, so he has to translate words into spoken English while holding a dictionary, then study and make a report. "At this time, there were more than a dozen people sitting below, not only two teachers from the Department of Mathematics, but also teachers who came to Sun Yat-sen University for training. I spent most of those two and a half years studying abstract algebra. "
Zhang Shouwu's college life was particularly pleasant, except that he failed a math exam. The reason is that he took the ordinary differential equation exam of Grade 79 in advance, and he got 75 points, so he asked the school to give him another chance to take the exam of his classmates in the same grade. In order to make the students in the class get good grades, he mimeographed the questions and answers of the last exam for everyone to learn. I didn't expect the two exams to be the same. As a result, the whole class got more than 90 points. After investigating the situation clearly, the teacher was very angry and deducted 59 points from his paper. Although he scored 100 in the make-up exam, the record of failing is still there, which makes him very nervous. Considering the impact on the future. So he finished all the courses one year ahead of schedule.
Talking about college life, Zhang Shouwu said: "I am very happy in college. I have been studying by myself and communicating with teachers in a relaxed environment. In college, my biggest gain is that I can speak the mathematics I have learned. Mathematics and language are unified. " 1982 During the summer vacation, Zhang Shouwu is going to apply for the postgraduate degree in the Institute of Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. When reviewing, he doesn't want to do standard exercises repeatedly. "I don't like to do technical things, but I like to do projects. I think it is very interesting to think about one thing for two or three days instead of an hour or two. " He decided to read two books by George Polya, a mathematician from Stanford University in the United States: Problems and Theorems in Analysis, Volume I and Volume II.
In rural Anhui, he is drying rice and reading Paulia's books. "This book is particularly difficult to read. Every exercise is like a small piece of paper, which takes a long time to do. " He said, "I took the exam in winter. I am really lucky. At that time, I took the public examination of analysis and algebra. Almost all the questions are in Paulia's book, and one question is wrong. I corrected it and solved it again. I feel very satisfied. "
When the university was about to graduate, a professor of mathematics from the University of Illinois visited Sun Yat-sen University. Zhang Shouwu's teacher wanted to recommend him to the professor. The professor said, "You are too young to learn algebra. It is out of date. You should study algebra and geometry. " In this way, Zhang Shouwu knew that he would learn algebra and geometry in the future.
1983 is especially important for Zhang Shouwu. The first thing is that he was admitted to the Graduate School of Mathematics of Chinese Academy of Sciences. The second thing is that Academician Wang Yuan of the Institute of Mathematics has just returned from abroad and made a report in the Institute of Mathematics, introducing the proof of Mo Deer's conjecture by Gerd Fielding, a young German mathematician.
"The predecessors said that this theorem is so beautiful that it only took more than 30 pages to prove it, but he couldn't understand any of it except the preface." This is a great shock to Zhang Shouwu. He said to Wang Yuan, "I want to read with you. I will read this article. If I understand this article within three years, you will give me a degree. " Wang Yuan said, "Look, I will give you a master's degree when I understand it."
But this article is really too difficult. While reading this article, Zhang Shouwu read Robin Hartshorne's Standard Algebraic Geometry, which he bought in 2.9 yuan from a foreign language bookstore near the former Bayi Middle School. Three years later, he has finished reading hartson's book, but he still can't understand Fielding's paper. When he graduated, he fabricated a paper. He clearly remembers: "After the defense, our elders said that we couldn't understand a word you said, but considering that you have been in the office before 8 o'clock every day and worked hard, this master's degree will be given to you, and you have to rely on real talents to learn in the future." 1985, when Zhang Shouwu was still a graduate student, Professor Goldfield from the Department of Mathematics of Columbia University visited the Institute of Mathematics, and Wang Yuan asked Zhang Shouwu to accompany him. When Goldfield was giving a report, Zhang Shouwu sat in the front row and helped him clean the blackboard. But when he accompanied him to the Forbidden City, Zhang Shouwu was extremely nervous, because he couldn't speak a word of everyday English except math, so he brought an English-Chinese dictionary.
After buying a ticket in the Forbidden City, "I found my luck again. All the instructions of the Forbidden City are in English, so I don't have to say a word. I followed him, then began to discuss mathematics and told him faltings's paper. At this time, I found that he didn't know algebra and geometry at all, but he was very interested in what I was doing. I asked him what he should read, and he said, you should read a book by Japanese mathematician Tomura Goro: Introduction to Arithmetic Theory of Automorphism Functions.
After Goldfield came back, Zhang Shouwu finally found this book in the library, but failed to understand it. At this time, he began to apply for going abroad. The place he wants to go most is Princeton University, because Fielding is there, but Wang Yuan wants him to go to Columbia University and Goldfield. Later, for some unknown reason, all his application materials for Columbia University were lost. One day, Goldfield wrote to tell him that he had not received the materials and asked him if he would like to go to Colombia again. He said, "Yes."
So, Goldfield personally found an application form to fill in, and asked someone to write a letter of recommendation. At this time, Wang Yuan happened to be in the United States. He said to Goldfield, "Zhang Shouwu is the best student in China." Zhang Shouwu scored 480 points in TOEFL, with a perfect score of 600 and an admission line of 550. He is afraid to send his TOEFL scores. After a while, he received the admission notice from Colombia. 1September 1986, Zhang Shouwu came to Columbia University. Goldfield suggested that he learn the form of self-discipline, and gave him an article to make a Gross-Zaghir formula after reading it. It took him about two months to finish it. He said to Goldfield, "I can't do it. I won't do it with you. You recommended me to go to Princeton and do it with lies. " Goldfield said he didn't have to do it, and wrote a letter of recommendation for him to go to Princeton.
As a precaution, Zhang Shouwu made a special trip to Princeton to meet Fortin, who agreed to give him half an hour. He was so happy that he wrote down all the English he wanted to say and memorized it. At the meeting, he said to Fielding, "I admire you very much. I have read your articles and many books. " It will arrive soon in half an hour. Fielding stood up and left without saying a word. Zhang Shouwu was surprised: "He obviously has no interest in me at all. But he gave me half an hour after all. "
In the evening, Zhang Shouwu went to the head of mathematics department of Princeton University to have dinner with No.5 Middle School. Tell Wu Zhong that Goldfield said in his letter of recommendation: Zhang Shouwu studied very well at Columbia University and basically didn't have to go to Princeton. He said, "I think maybe I can't go to Princeton because of this letter."
Zhang Shouwu returned to Columbia University in frustration, but still wanted to learn faltings, that is, arithmetic algebra geometry, so he rejoined Jacquet, a modern automatic control expert. Jagger gave him a question from his friend Lungeland (the founder of Lungeland Project). He read a lot of things and found arithmetic, algebra and geometry related to them more interesting, so he didn't start doing anything. At this time, Jagger saw him every two weeks and gave him what he had calculated. "He has counted more than 40 pages and asked me to count more than 60 pages to let me graduate, but I haven't started counting yet. At this rate, he will help me finish counting. " So he said to Jagger, "I can't study with you anymore because you are too kind."
1988, French mathematics professor spiro visited Columbia University for half a year. He is the funniest teacher Zhang Shouwu has ever seen: "He comes to the United States once or twice, and I am particularly relaxed with him. His English is poor, so is mine. It's just that he never said that my English was poor. In class, he holds a cigarette in one hand and chalk in the other. When he makes mistakes occasionally, he puts chalk in his mouth and writes on the blackboard with a cigarette in his mouth. He speaks mathematics very simply, but his thoughts are particularly profound, but he has no skills. Fielding was inspired after seeing him, which proved Mo Deer's conjecture. "
After spiro returned to France, Zhang Shouwu had no teacher. He wrote to spiro: Can I study with you? Can you give me a topic? Spiro wrote back to give him a topic, only half a page. Zhang Shouwu tried hard, but he still couldn't do it. But because he studied with Goldfield for two months and Jagger for one year, he wrote a very good example, with more than 30 pages. After that, I went to Johns Hopkins University to attend the Japan-US Mathematics Conference and met faltings for the second time at the reception. "I told him that I had studied a lot of math and asked him if he had any questions, hoping to get his attention." . But faltings only replied "I don't know" and left, which made Zhang Shouwu very embarrassed. He doesn't care about me at all.
After returning to Columbia University, Zhang Shou's military commanders wrote everything and took two decent papers. At this time, spiro was so happy that he applied for a post-doctoral position at the French Advanced Research Center, even though he had not obtained a doctorate.
1June 1989, Zhang Shouwu and his wife went to France. "The postdoctoral apartment we live in is very good, with flowers, birds, fish and insects outside and good conditions inside. At that time, my article was finished, and I made my first formal academic report at the Poincare Institute in France. At that time, I made some breakthroughs on the issue of spiro. "
At the French Center for Advanced Studies, Zhang Shouwu met faltings for the third time and showed him his article. "He was very happy after reading it and smiled at me. It was the friendliest of the three meetings, but he still didn't say a word. But at this moment, I am extremely happy, because he is the person I admire most, and I finally touched my god. In fact, he is only 35 years old, and he won the Fields Medal at the age of 32.
The visit to France was very successful. A year later, Zhang Shouwu's wife became pregnant and they returned to America. When he arrived in Colombia, he found something surprising: Goldfield applied for a full exchange scholarship from Si Long Business School for him. 1990, Zhang Shouwu took the money to study in Princeton for a year, and "finally realized my dream". At Princeton, the first thing Zhang Shouwu did was ask faltings if he could give him a topic. Faltings only said one sentence: "I have done all the easy questions, and the rest are extremely difficult, such as Riemann conjecture." Zhang Shouwu didn't know how to answer this Germanic humor, and he was very uncomfortable.
But suddenly one day, faltings said to him, "I'm going to start my class. You take notes. After completion, we meet twice a week to exchange views. " Zhang Shouwu said, "I used to learn all kinds of tools. I studied with you for a year without your guidance. That year was an extremely important year in my life. His style is something I have never seen before. "
Faltings told a paper by French mathematician Bismut in class. Zhang Shouwu said: "These articles are extremely long, basically 200 to 300 pages, which is very difficult to read, but faltings has such skills. After reading the preface, he has a way to make everything that others have done for many years. I don't think I have such skills. "
On one occasion, Zhang Shouwu asked Fan Tingsi an analytical question. Faltings asked him to look up three volumes of books in the library, told him that the answer was inside, and asked him to give the answer the next day. These three volumes each have more than 65,438+0,000 pages. It took Zhang Shouwu more than an hour to find the page he needed, so he decided to do the math himself. "The first time I found out that I could work it out, I was particularly proud. Only then did I know how everyone did math. He didn't know where to look up the literature, but he did something he didn't know. Later, I said that faltings met a mountain when he was doing math. Most people climb the snow-capped mountains and cross the grass to find a shortcut, but he bulldozed the mountains or bombed them. He won't do it skillfully. He made it entirely by strength. This is the only style I have ever seen among mathematicians. His strength is too great and has a great influence on me. "
After studying with faltings at Princeton for a year, Zhang Shou learned the mathematics in martial arts: "Instead of raising other people's things in the library and linking other people's mathematics together, it is better to start from the most basic place." He returned to Columbia University and began to defend his doctoral thesis. Faltings also went to Columbia University as a member of the defense committee, which caused a sensation in the department of mathematics, because sometimes he was asked to give a report in the department, and he might not come.
199 1 It is difficult to apply for a position in the United States. Zhang Shouwu asked the professor how many schools he should apply to. Goldfield said, "My students should apply to 65,438+000 schools, and you should apply to 75 schools." Spiro thought 75 was too much, and 35 was enough, but faltings said, "One is enough. Where are you going? I will write you a letter of recommendation. " Zhang Shouwu is not so confident, but he applied to more than 30 schools. As a result, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, UC Berkeley and Stanford University all agreed to give him a position.
Zhang Shouwu said: "The pseudo-Ting Si is right. Actually, I just want to go to Princeton University and work with him for a few more years. So, I went to the Princeton Center for Advanced Studies for a year. In the next three years, I worked as an assistant professor at Princeton University, and the university added another three years to my position. " 1One autumn day in 995, Zhang Shouwu invited Goldfield to give a lecture at Princeton. Goldfield asked him if he wanted to go back to Colombia, and he said yes. In June 5438+10, he returned to Columbia University to give a report and found that there were still three people competing for this position, and they were all famous. After the report was finished, Goldfield called him worthless: "You are hopeless. Your English is too poor. Those three people must be better than you."
When Zhang Shouwu returned to Princeton in anger, he vowed never to return to Columbia University. However, more than a month later, on Christmas Eve, he suddenly received a phone call from the head of the mathematics department of Columbia University: We gave you this position. "It's incredible, because no one has talked to me about it during this period." He said, "Later, Goldfield explained that we read all the letters of recommendation, yours is the best, and we can only have you."
1June, 1996, Zhang Shouwu returned to Colombia. He found that he couldn't afford to rent a house, and he couldn't afford to buy a house after he took a fancy to it. At this time, Goldfield asked him how much he owed, and he copied his savings to him. Unexpectedly, Goldfield went to the vice president of Columbia University. He went in the morning and got a check in the afternoon, without any additional conditions, except for a verbal agreement: the money was used to buy a house, not a car. Two days later, he bought a house with the down payment from the school. However, only a few days after he bought the house, he proved the generalized Bogomoloff conjecture.
1997, Zhang Shouwu was invited to give a 45-minute speech at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Berlin. In the same year, he won the global outstanding Chinese mathematician Moningside Mathematics Award; 1998 became a full professor at Columbia University. He said: "1998, I reached a peak in my life." Chenxing won the gold medal in mathematics, which is related to Zhang Shouwu's Gross-Chachia formula. This was originally the topic that Goldfield asked 1986 to apply for a doctorate when he first arrived in the United States, but he stopped doing it two months later. At 1995, he began to want to do ABC conjecture, which is far more important in mathematics than Fermat's last theorem, and it is only an inference of ABC conjecture; In other words, as long as ABC conjecture is proved, Fermat's last theorem is proved. However, wiles claimed that Fermat's Last Theorem was proved in 1995. Zhang Shouwu was very depressed and thought that proving ABC conjecture was not so important, so he decided to return to Gross-Chachia formula.
At this time, Zhang Shouwu has turned around in the field of mathematics, learned many different things, and his ability is much stronger than before. By 200 1, he has finished this formula. He said, "These works are more profound than my Bogomoloff conjecture, so in 200 1 year, my mathematics life reached a small peak."
But in the next four years, he experienced an unstable period in his life. He said, "Maybe he is 40 years old, and he feels the downward trend. He was depressed for three or four years. "
By 2005, Zhang Shouwu began to rethink ABC conjecture as a whole. In 2006, he suddenly discovered that Bogomolov's conjecture was related to the Gross-Chakia formula. "This is very important to me. I think I have found a bridge that can connect two completely different lands, with L function on one side and Diophantine equation on the other, so I am in a very excited state these two years. I don't know if I will be depressed. Mr Qiu asked China mathematicians to learn from me, and I told him it was a joke. But at the same time, I will take this sentence as encouragement to me. I will work hard and take good care of my students. "