In October this year, the famous Chinese-American mathematician Zhang Yitang revealed that he "has solved the Landau Siegel zero-point conjecture", which not only shocked the mathematics community, but also attracted public attention from the domestic public. Recently, Zhang Yitang's alma mater, , the School of Mathematics Sciences of Peking University, and its Pan Chengdong Mathematics Institute of Shandong University, which serves as part-time academic leaders, responded to Nandu reporters that he has paid attention to this matter and looks forward to the official release of its academic achievements.
Yitang Zhang is currently a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was born in 1955 and was admitted to the Department of Mathematics of Peking University in 1978. From 1982 to 1985, he continued to study for a master's degree at Peking University , and studied under Professor Pan Chengbiao . In 1992, he graduated from Purdue University in the United States with a doctorate degree.
Zhang Yitang's main research direction is analytical number theory , which belongs to pure mathematics, opposite to applied mathematics. In the words of , the dean of the School of Mathematical Sciences of Peking University, , Chen Dayue, , the field of , number theory, "the problems left behind are all hard bones."
In 2013, 58-year-old Zhang Yitang published an article "Bounded Gaps Between Primes" in Annals of Mathematics, a top journal in the world's mathematics, proving that in the process of numbers tending to infinity, there are infinite number pairs of prime numbers with "the difference between numbers is less than 70 million", which makes the famous problem in number theory " twin prime number conjecture " make the first substantial advance. With this achievement, Zhang Yitang won several professional awards and won the American cross-field honor " MacArthur Award " (commonly known as the "Genius Award") in 2014. Before that, he had been dormant for a long time and rarely published academic results. He had worked in accounting, couriers and other jobs because he was difficult to obtain teaching positions, but he did not give up pure theoretical research. Such a life experience has given him a legendary color, and is described by the outside world as a "hermit", "a sword that has been sharpened for ten years", and "a lonely mathematician".
After many years, Zhang Yitang revealed the latest research progress at the Peking University New York Alumni Association event, which is about the "Landau Siegel Zero Point Conjecture", which is also a bottleneck problem in the field of number theory, and is closely linked to the famous " Riemann Conjecture " in the history of mathematics. Nandu reporters noticed that in 2007, Zhang Yitang posted a paper on the Internet about the "Landau Siegel Zero Point Conjecture", which failed to reach a proof at that time, but he once expressed that he "hopefully someone will correct it." In recent years, he has also been committed to solving the "Rymann Conjecture". Therefore, when he showed his storm, he immediately attracted high attention in the academic community.
According to Zhang Yitang, the relevant paper will be launched soon. Recently, , , School of Mathematics Science, Peking University, and its Pan Chengdong Mathematics Research Institute of Shandong University, which serves as part-time academic leaders, responded to Nandu reporters that they have paid attention to this matter and look forward to the official release of their academic achievements.
Interview and writing: Nandu reporter Hou Jingjing
