China News Agency, Hong Kong, January 31st, title: Changes in the earth, the complexity of the sun and the moon, mathematics is everywhere——Interview with Hong Kong mathematician Mo Yiming
China News Agency reporter Han Xingtong
For a while, Hong Kong mathematician Mo Yiming was fascinated by "Chu Ci" and also became interested in the literature of the Tang and Song Dynasties, because he saw some romanticism bred from the gap between the times, so he also began to learn to write poems , "I want to learn how people of that era express themselves, and have some kind of spiritual communication with that era."
He also taught himself French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and even Indian Sanskrit.
In the eyes of others, this seems irrelevant to the study of mathematics, but Mo Yiming quoted Hua Luogeng's famous saying: "The universe is so big, the particles are so small, the earth is changing, the sun and the moon are so complicated, mathematics is everywhere." .
If a person has a wider understanding of the world, there are more natural sources of inspiration.
"There is a concept in linguistics called 'reconstruction', which is to reconstruct the fundamentals of a language. The concept of 'reconstruction' is related to mathematics, such as VMRT (very small rational curve cluster), can it be based on The geometry of a point reconstructs this space."
He created the VMRT theory and used it to solve a series of conjectures in the field of algebraic geometry, as well as the proof of the Ax-Schanuel conjecture on Shimura varieties. Mok won the Future Science Award last year - the winner of the Mathematics and Computer Science Award. He is also the first in Hong Kong. Five scientists who have won the Future Science Prize.
In an exclusive interview with a reporter from China News Agency recently, Mo Yiming traced back to the starting point of his journey of mathematics exploration. It was actually an ordinary public elementary school. He trained his problem-solving speed in order to pass the middle school entrance examination.
A sister's old textbook contributed a lot to untying him from the patterned learning thinking and discovering the beauty of mathematics.
"At that time, Hong Kong was just undergoing mathematics (education) reform, transitioning from old mathematics to new mathematics. My sister was one level ahead of me. She was still in old mathematics that year. We started to learn new mathematics. I took her textbooks to read." He said While eagerly absorbing the old mathematics with classical content and more problem-solving-centric, he also mastered the mathematical logic and linear algebra of the new mathematics.
By the time Mo Yiming graduated from middle school in 1975 and received a scholarship from the University of Chicago to study in the United States, his foundation in mathematics was relatively solid. course."
In Mo Yiming's interpretation, the beauty of mathematics is a relatively abstract beauty—concise and coherent, and the truth can be described in a simple way.
Mathematics is a romantic practice for him, "As a mathematician, you must have a dream or hope to reach a height. If you want to find a solution to a problem, you must use your imagination and have a high appreciation ability. To cultivate this kind of sentiment, you also need to have a good life experience.”
Mo Yiming has had such a dream since he was a child - "I hope to do something that can contribute to China, Chinese culture and civilization." This dream quietly sprouted and thrived in the little stories told by his father.
So when Mo Yiming met the first group of Chinese students studying abroad in Princeton University in 1980, they eagerly absorbed knowledge to improve their scientific research level while introducing advanced international content back to China. He also participated in the action early in the morning.
Today, more than 40 years later, the rapid development of Chinese mathematics is no longer the same. "China's progress in the field of mathematics is very obvious, and it has reached the world level in some fields, but overall it will take time." He said. I can't deny that I am full of confidence in the future of Chinese mathematics.
However, in the world of mathematics, there are always more problems to solve than there are people who can solve them.
Because of this, Mo Yiming always believes that for the development of mathematics, there must be many people with motivation and dreams.
"My philosophy is that one should use one's ability to serve the nation, the world, and your family. You don't know how much talent you have. If your talent is high, But if you have not reached that height, you are wasting yourself. But if your talent is not that high, but you work hard and try to get close to this level, then you have lived a brave life." (End)