346: Chapter 346 Signs

The internet was in an uproar.

Many netizens were still very excited; after all, that was Terence Tao.

In recent years, besides Zhao Yang, the most famous mathematician in the world was Terence Tao.

Moreover, Terence Tao was ethnic Chinese, grew up in Australia, had worked in the United States, won the fields medal, and was an almost omnipotent presence in fields like Harmonic Analysis and Analytic Number Theory.

If Terence Tao could join the nationality of the Dragon Kingdom from now on, many people would still be happy.

To take a step back, even if he didn't change his nationality, having a mathematician of this caliber come to the Dragon Kingdom would still be a significant boost to the Dragon Kingdom's mathematics field. He could mentor a group of Doctoral Students, attract more top international scholars for exchanges, and elevate the overall research level of the School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University to a new level.

"After God Tao arrives, the Peking University mathematics department will basically be one of the most luxurious lineups in the world. God Zhao plus God Tao—these two people together, one specializing in Algebraic Geometry and the Polynomial method, and the other in Harmonic Analysis and Analytic Number Theory, cover several of the most cutting-edge areas of modern pure mathematics."

"I heard that Terence Tao's son is also coming to the Dragon Kingdom to study. He really intends to settle down here for the long term."

"It's hard to say about long-term settlement, but the fact that he is willing to come is already a strong signal. In the past, it was always our top talent running abroad, but now it's finally the turn of top foreign talent to run to us."

"God Zhao must have played a role behind the scenes in this matter with God Tao. They have collaborated so many times; that paper on the Kakeya Conjecture was co-written by the two of them. Terence Tao has also mentioned several times on his blog that Zhao Yang is the person with the best mathematical intuition he has ever met."

"If I could go to Peking University and audit one of their seminar classes, my life in mathematics wouldn't have been in vain."

On the other side, Terence Tao came to visit Zhao Yang's villa.

His eyes swept over the decorations of Zhao Yang's villa with some amazement.

"The renovation of your villa is amazing, and it's so spacious; it's the best villa I've ever seen!"

Zhao Yang smiled.

"It's alright! Coffee or tea?"

"Tea."

As he spoke, Zhao Yang had already brought over three drinks: two cups of tea and one glass of juice.

Terence Tao's son followed behind; the juice was for him.

Sitting on the sofa, Terence Tao held his teacup and was silent for a while.

"I have thought for a long time about the things you reminded me of earlier."

Terence Tao placed the teacup on the coffee table and said to Zhao Yang seriously.

"You told me to pay attention to the child's educational environment and said that the basic values here are stable. You spoke very subtly, and I have pondered it more than once. Zhao, do you think the United States will get worse?"

Zhao Yang leaned on the armrest of the sofa and thought for about a few seconds.

"I have noticed a trend, and you must have noticed it too,"

Zhao Yang picked up the remote control from the coffee table, turned on the living room TV, and casually switched to a news channel, where the screen was broadcasting pre-election news for the United States.

"In recent years, the trend of political correctness in the United States has become increasingly strong. These two words are good words in themselves, and here, their boundaries are very clear. But when a social trend loses its boundaries and begins to expand infinitely, what will it become?

The trend I see is that it is no longer a proposition for pursuing social progress; it is becoming a new way of distributing benefits. Various interest groups are rushing to define what is 'correct' and then using this definition to attack opponents and compete for resources. This trend will inevitably infiltrate down through the public education system, because it needs to shape cognition starting from the next generation."

"Do you think the Dragon Kingdom won't have similar problems?"

"The cultural genes of the Dragon Kingdom are different from those of the West. The mainstream values here are based on a stable family structure and a clear division of social roles. These things have existed in the Dragon Kingdom for thousands of years and are not easily shaken. I am not saying that there are no social problems here, but in terms of the stability of basic values, this place is much more reliable than the current United States."

Terence Tao leaned back on the sofa and was silent for a while. He was not a person who didn't pay attention to politics; he had more or less observed some signs of what Zhao Yang mentioned. It was just that he had probably never seriously considered that those election news and political commentaries would have a direct connection to his son's educational choices.

"We shall see."

Zhao Yang shrugged and said to Terence Tao with a smile.

After finishing this conversation, the two naturally turned back to academics. This was probably the most comfortable part of every meeting between Zhao Yang and Terence Tao. No matter how heavy or sensitive the topics discussed before were, once they started talking about mathematics, all those things were thrown to the back of their minds.

Terence Tao took out a stack of draft paper from his briefcase, which was densely filled with derivations of the application of Harmonic Analysis in the Polynomial method. He reorganized several sub-problems in the appendix of Zhao Yang's P vs NP paper and made an optimized version of the boundary conditions using his specialty, the Fourier coefficient decay estimate.

Zhao Yang flipped through his drafts and pointed out several error terms that could be further compressed at certain key steps. The two talked deeper and deeper, discussing everything from the generalization of the Hilbert's Nullstellensatz to the specific construction details of the Trace map on an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero.

"I read the article by that MIT team last time; the idea of using the normal cone to handle boundary conditions is indeed very clever,"

Zhao Yang picked up a pen and drew a simple diagram on the paper.

"But their bounds are not tight enough."

"Right, using filter decay to fit the Polynomial method normal cone boundaries."

Terence Tao took the pen from his hand and added a few lines to the diagram.

"You mentioned last time that the Trace map might have losses when pulled back, but I verified and found that the loss is only significant in positive characteristic fields. The Trace map on an algebraically closed field of characteristic zero is a strict isomorphism, and their combined optimization of codimension estimation is already sufficient."

Zhao Yang nodded. "Next, your focus is on characteristic zero convergence, and my focus is still on positive characteristic fields—I still need to derive another section on Grothendieck's flat morphism theory."

Terence Tao packed up the draft paper and put it back into his briefcase. The sky outside the window had already darkened.

Over the next few days, the School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University held a short welcome meeting for Terence Tao at the Centennial Memorial Hall. Teachers and students from the mathematics department sat below the stage; the old professors in the front row already had completely white hair, and the students in the back rows were crowded together, with many holding notebooks in their hands.

Terence Tao gave a short speech at the meeting, briefly talking about his journey to Yanda and expressing some expectations for the future. He used Chinese for the entire duration.

In fact, Terence Tao didn't know how to speak Chinese before; he could speak Cantonese but not Mandarin. It was Zhao Yang who reminded him and encouraged him to learn Mandarin.

At the moment, although Terence Tao's Mandarin had obvious English sentence structure and occasionally non-standard tones, he spoke every sentence very seriously.