"I used to be a farmer, and I always think I will always be a farmer from the bottom of my heart... I really want to be a poet, but unfortunately I don't have talent."
"I study nonlinear optimization, my grades are average, and my work is quite hard."
"I love reading, and buying books is also one of my hobbies."
"I love to play bridge , and now I also play. If you are interested, you can participate in the regular bridge activities every double Friday night in our institute..."
In the introduction of the tutor of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Yuan Yaxiang said this.
Yuan Yaxiang is an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and also an academician of the Academy of Sciences in , a correspondent academician of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Society of Industry and Applied Mathematics, and a first member of the American Society of Mathematics. He is currently a researcher at Institute of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences and vice chairman of China Association for Science and Technology.
As the first college entrance examination candidate after the Cultural Revolution in 1977, Yuan Yaxiang studied at Xiangtan University , Chinese Academy of Sciences and Cambridge University in the UK. After completing his studies, he entered Chinese Academy of Sciences Computing Center . In his nearly half a century of scientific research career, he has made important contributions to trust domain method, quasi-Newtonian method, nonlinear conjugated gradient method, etc.
is over 60 years old, and Yuan Yaxiang is still struggling in scientific research positions. In his opinion, "learning" and "scientific research" are total interests. He likes to solve mathematical problems, "just like children nowadays like to play games."
Yuan Yaxiang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics and Systems Sciences of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and vice chairman of the Chinese Association for Science and Technology. Photo by Feng Yuxin, reporter of Beijing News
Interest in learning that has been cultivated since childhood
Beijing News: When did you start school?
Yuan Yaxiang: I went to elementary school at the age of five, and I was considered to have been a relatively early enlightenment in my hometown. But in fact, before going to school, I would use textbooks from my neighbors' big brothers and older sisters to recognize words.
Beijing News: Is recognized words in advance out of my own interests or my parents’ request?
Yuan Yaxiang: on the surface, it is my spontaneous interest. When I see others going to school to recognize words, I find it fun, envious, and curious, so I want to recognize words. But in fact, I think it was my mother who influenced me. She is illiterate and has never studied for a day. Even her own name was written by me when I grew up, but she knows education very well and knows how to cultivate children's interest in learning. She has a good abacus because she always sells vegetables in the village. My abacus was taught by her. She will also tell me some interesting arithmetic problems, which make me feel fun and still not satisfied, and I want to learn it myself.
Beijing News: is there any burden for you to go to school?
Yuan Yaxiang: In my impression, it is basically free to go to elementary school, and textbooks are also free to be distributed, so the family basically has no burden, and I have never heard of anyone who can’t go to elementary school because of poverty. But further studies, the situation will change. Many rural parents, especially those who have daughters, feel that there is no need to let their children go to junior high school. It is better to do some work at home, grow vegetables, chop firewood, and earn some work points for their families. But my parents have always supported me in continuing to go to school.
Beijing News: What do you think your parents’ support for your studies comes from?
Yuan Yaxiang: Our family’s educational atmosphere has always been very good. Two uncles are teachers and one uncle is a college student. My father has never attended a formal school, but he has been listening to it in a private school for a few years. In other words, he is probably at the third grade of elementary school. He and my mother always told me that people need to learn continuously to become knowledgeable and to be admired by others.
Beijing News: What is your favorite subject since childhood?
Yuan Yaxiang: likes the most is mathematics, and my math scores have always been very good. There was no concept of ranking at that time, but I remember always ranked among the top ones.
Beijing News: You said in your self-report that you actually want to be a poet.
Yuan Yaxiang: is also considered to be some poetic and literary hobbies. When I was a child, I didn’t read many books. I loved reading poems in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", such as "The rolling Yangtze River flows eastward"; I also often read some limerick poems in the village.But to be honest, I don’t have much talent in literature. Mathematics is different. To me, learning mathematics is like children playing games nowadays. I am very happy.
Yuan Yaxiang (first right in the back row) family portrait with her parents and brother at an hour. Photo provided by the interviewee
Twisted and twists and turns Middle School Road
Beijing News: In your self-report, you said that your middle school study experience has some twists and turns.
Yuan Yaxiang: I finished the first year of junior high school at the age of 12, and then took a year off. Because there was no high school entrance examination at that time, I was recommended all the time when I went to high school. I went to school too early, and many of my classmates at the same level were about two years older than me, so the limited recommended places were basically not my turn. My dad asked me to take a year off from school.
At that time, I was relatively small and shed cattle in the production team. I only had two work points per day. When I rode on the back of a cow, I envied those children who could still go to school. I would ask them questions or borrow their textbooks to study by myself. In 1973, I continued to go to school. By 1974, when I was 15 years old, I graduated from high school and encountered sports again. The college entrance examination was stopped, so I had to go home and be a farmer. Until 1978, I went to college and I worked at home for three years. The production team thought I was good at math and asked me to do work such as storage and cashiering.
Beijing News: At that time, was there any other choice besides going home to farm?
Yuan Yaxiang: I actually didn’t think that one day I could leave the countryside. I already thought I would be a farmer for the rest of my life. In that era, if you had a urban household registration, you could go find a job after graduating from high school. And I have a rural household registration and can only be a farmer, or I sign up for the army and slowly change my identity.
My friends in the same village got married and had children at around 18 years old, and had a second child in their early 20s. I often joke that if I recovered from the college entrance examination a few years later, I would definitely get married and have children very early. In fact, I got married later after returning home from Cambridge after studying for a doctorate.
Beijing News : Did you still keep studying in the past three years of farming?
Yuan Yaxiang: For three years, my mother has been encouraging me - she knew that I had good grades at school and often won awards in competitions, so she asked me to find some books to read by myself in addition to doing farm work. She always said that it is always okay for you to learn more. Of course, at that time, unlike now, all books were sold in bookstores. At that time, there were at most a few high school textbooks. I read them over and over again and found some math problems to solve. I have an uncle who is a junior high school mathematics teacher. He has some popular mathematics books at home, and I will ask him to borrow them to read them. Mathematical problems such as the third-level arbitrary angle and the Ferma Grand Theorem are all learned in these books.
I don’t have utilitarian intentions when studying, I just think it’s fun.
Go to the college entrance examination, just like participating in the Gozi Chess Competition
Beijing News : When did you know that will resume the college entrance examination ?
Yuan Yaxiang: I can't remember the specific days of . It was about a month before the official college entrance examination. My father brought back a message from the county town and found the captain of our production team and asked me to give me a month of leave to prepare for the exam. I got off work for a month and went to the school where I was in high school to rent a house to live in, and reviewed with a few students preparing for the exam every day. The school assigned teachers to provide appropriate guidance, but mainly relying on their own questions.
Beijing News: Is there anything that impressed you by ?
Yuan Yaxiang : I really don’t have a deep impression. At that time, in the countryside, I just did farm work every day and didn't think about anything else. If you have the opportunity to take the college entrance examination, it is like our unit held a Gozi competition yesterday, just to take the exam. If you can't pass the exam, you won't pass the exam. If you can pass the exam, you can probably work in the town without being a farmer anymore. As for being a scientist? This is unexpected.
I just remember that the college entrance examination room was in my junior high school. On the day of the exam, I took Chinese and mathematics, but not English, as if political history was in one volume and physics and chemistry were in one volume. A teacher from our country beat the question of Chinese composition, which roughly asked us to write about our thoughts on entering the exam room, our ambition to get into college, etc. I prepared the content in advance and wrote that if I pass the exam, I will study hard for the country. If I fail the exam, I will go back and be a farmer.After the exam, I went back to work and didn't take the initiative to inquire about the results later. Until today, I don’t know how many points I got. After the
exam, the teacher told me that I can apply for Xiangtan University at my level, and if I work in the future, I will go to Changsha. For me at that time, working in the provincial capital was very good. But we don’t know what the level of people in other villages, towns, and cities are, so we don’t know what kind of school I can apply for.
Later, the county posted an admission list. My father saw the news that I was admitted to the Department of Computational Mathematics of Xiangtan University and told me. Of course I was very happy at that time, but I didn’t celebrate and didn’t hold a banquet like now.
Learn
Beijing News: Do you still remember the scene when you first went to college?
Yuan Yaxiang: I took a shoulder pole, carried a bed quilt on one end, and a black painted wooden box on the other end, which contained clothes, toothbrushes and toothpaste, and I also had to bring a washbasin.
The family specially bought me a pair of new shoes from Jiefang brand. After I took the car to , Xiangtan City, for more than 20 hours, the school sent a car to pick us up to the campus. When I got off the car, I stepped on my new shoes and stomped on it. At that time, the whole school was still a large construction site.
Xiangtan University was founded in the 1950s, but later it was suspended. It was resumed around 1974. When I arrived, the only teaching building had not been built yet, and we were in the cafeteria at first. Six buildings were built in the student dormitory, but the faculty and staff dormitories were not built, and the teachers all lived in the surrounding farmers' houses. I thought at that time that this university is similar to our rural areas.
Beijing News: What was the university atmosphere like at that time?
Yuan Yaxiang: Even though the college students of our era had good and bad grades, they were all studying hard because everyone thought that the opportunity to study was not easy. Moreover, we really couldn't think of anything else we could do besides studying. Xiangtan University is located in a barren mountain and wilderness. It took a long time for a bus to get to the city.
I have a scholarship, enough to eat, and I can save a little money to buy math reference books, but overall I am not well off. One year I returned to school from home and brought 5 yuan. In fact, I only had 2.9 yuan for the train ticket alone. Where can I get any pocket money? I can only study in school.
During college, I ran half an hour of steps and played half an hour of volleyball every day, and basically studied in the ladder classroom for the rest of my time. I remember that I liked the "Mathematical Analysis" class by Mr. Li Shoufu at that time. It was a turning point from elementary mathematics to advanced mathematics , and it had a profound impact on me.
Beijing News: How are your undergraduate grades?
Yuan Yaxiang: should be one of the best grades in the department. I remember that in the second year of school, because of my good academic performance, I became a study committee member.
has a classmate named Xu Jinchao , but I still have a few points higher than him in every exam. Later, I took the postgraduate entrance examination for Chinese Academy of Sciences and , and he took the postgraduate entrance examination for Peking University . I went to Cambridge University in the United Kingdom to study for a doctorate, and he went to Cornell University in the United States to study for a doctorate. He is now also a very top mathematician in the world.
Life is like long jump
Beijing News: What other hobbies do you have in addition to scientific research and teaching?
Yuan Yaxiang: Sports is my long-term hobby. When I was in college, I ran at least 5 kilometers a day. Now I am older and walk and climb more. Before, I took graduate students to climb mountains every week or go for long hiking in the wild. We usually walk for a day, find a farmhouse to have a meal, and then play cards - I like to play bridge. At first, I played with my classmates in my undergraduate class, and later I went to the Chinese Academy of Sciences to study for a master's degree and then to the UK for a doctorate. They all maintained the habit of playing bridge. When I was in , Cambridge University , I also participated in bridge competitions on behalf of the college.
Beijing News: How do you arrange scientific research and teaching tasks recently?
Yuan Yaxiang: A few years ago, I also taught undergraduates, and the class hours and scientific research were very tight. After I was 60 years old, I tried to slow down my pace, and there were younger professors in the group who could undertake some of the teaching tasks.I only do research with graduate students, and I can do popular science and participate in some social activities.
Beijing News: From an academic perspective, have you set your life goals? Do you think you have achieved your life goals?
Yuan Yaxiang: It is hard to say, I am not the kind of person who has had great goals since I was a child. My mother used to tell me that I would finish the "five schools", junior high school, junior high school, junior high school, high school, and college. I always seem to be focusing on letting things go - I often joke with people that if I go to sports, I will definitely choose long jump instead of high jump. I just need to try my best to jump far, and the final score can be measured after I finish jumping; instead of using the pole to preset a height like a high jump. If I can't jump it at all, I might feel very depressed. Even if I skip it, my actual score will be only as high as it. My life is like a long jump. No matter what stage, the only thing I have to do is to keep working hard and what distance I finally reach, that is the final achievement of my life. I don't force it, I just let it go.
Beijing News: What do you want to say to young students?
Yuan Yaxiang : First of all, I envy young students. They live in a very good era, with the Internet, various bookstores, and can obtain knowledge from all aspects. I hope they must cherish the beautiful era they are in, not to abandon, and to make continuous progress. I hope they understand that winning or losing is not at the starting line, nor in the middle of the game. As long as they maintain speed and keep improving, anyone will achieve something.
Yuan Yaxiang’s handwritten message to young students. Photo provided by the interviewee
Character profile
Yuan Yaxiang , male, Han nationality , born in 1960 in Zixing City, Chenzhou City, Hunan Province, is a famous mathematician in my country. He is also an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, an academician of the developing country, a correspondent academician of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, a member of the American Society of Industry and Applied Mathematics, and a member of the American Mathematics Society. He is currently a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics and Systems Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Vice Chairman of the China Association for Science and Technology.
In 1982, he graduated from the Department of Computational Mathematics of Xiangtan University. In the same year, he entered the Computation Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to study for a postgraduate degree in , Feng Kang ; at the end of the year, he went to Cambridge University in the UK to study applied mathematics and theoretical physics, and studied under Professor M.J.D.Powell. In 1986, he received his Ph.D. in this major. In 1988, Yuan Yaxiang returned to China and joined the Computing Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1995, he became the director of the Institute of Computing Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and won the first Feng Kang Scientific Computing Award .
In the past half century of scientific research career, Yuan Yaxiang has made important contributions in the trust domain method, quasi-Newtonian method, nonlinear conjugated gradient method and other methods. In 2011, Yuan Yaxiang was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Beijing News reporter Feng Yuxin Intern Lei Xinyao
Editor Hu Jie Proofreading Xue Jingning
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