64. Seon Eleven
“Condition… Isn’t it?”
At my question, the major sister carefully opened her mouth.
“I think I’m going too presumptuous… .”
“… .”
“Jeong-ho, shouldn’t you go out of the world now?”
going out of the world.
Actually, I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.
But I was just putting off a decision because I wasn’t ready yet.
Will I be able to survive properly?
I was afraid.
Jealousy and hateful gazes from those who tormented me in my past life.
this is fine now
But I was afraid that my mother’s life would be ruined by my greed, and I was afraid that Youngmi would have to live a hard life again.
The silence grew longer in the laboratory, and the older sister who read my shaking eyes opened her mouth.
“Jungho, my sister will help you.”
elementary school days.
The only person who didn’t treat me like a child was my major sister, so she was the person I communicated best with.
Although she didn’t tell her the story of her past life, she has known her for a long time.
That’s why I don’t want to go out into the world.
I looked at my sister, and she patted my shoulder and said.
“When it comes to research… Your sister will be your protector.”
Professor Park said to her sister.
“Jung Ho-ya, do you know which professor is the scariest among professors?”
“scary… Professor?”
Professor Park smiled and opened his mouth.
“Professors, like me, who are nearing retirement age, are the scariest. We are people with nothing more to lose. If there are people who look down on you because you are young, I will not stand still before Dr. Yun comes forward.”
I smiled slightly at the professor’s words, and the professor continued with a short sigh.
“I’ve been watching you all this time, and I know roughly what you’re thinking.”
“… .”
“There are more good people than bad people in the world. So I guess you don’t have to be too scared.”
The professor’s words suddenly reminded me of what happened three years ago.
It was the case that I got 3rd place in the whole school by erroneously predicting the test difficulty of the midterm exam.
As soon as my name was called from the teacher’s mouth, I saw my friends knocking on the desk and cheering.
I raised my head and looked at Professor Park and the major older sister in turn.
“like. I will give it a try.”
My sister said as she messed up my hair.
“Jeong-ho, you can do well.”
Professor Park looked at me and nodded with a happy expression on his face, and after a while he said to the major’s sister.
“By the way, I would like to hear from Dr. Yoon, too. Is the Yoon-Schultz extended theory research progressing well?”
The Yoon-Schultz theory is the core topic of my sister’s doctoral thesis, and I know that when my sister received an offer from Texas State University, there was a condition that she continued this research.
I was also curious about what kind of research results my sister made.
At Professor Park’s question, my sister’s expression darkened slightly, but she immediately changed her expression to a brighter one and opened her mouth.
“Actually, I found a new research topic these days.”
“ah… ! okay?”
“I intend to challenge the Poincare guess in the future.”
At my sister’s words, I let out a low sigh.
Poincare’s conjecture.
It’s a problem I’ve challenged in my past life, and it’s a math puzzle that is proven by the eccentric mathematician Grigory Perelman.
The Yoon-Schultz theory, which is the core of her doctoral thesis, belongs to topology, but since the proof process of the theory starts with analysis, she has strengths in two fields: topology and analysis.
Many mathematicians think that the Poincaré conjecture is a problem only in topology, but Perelman’s proof method was actually a method based on analysis.
In other words, the Poincare conjecture is the perfect research topic for a major older sister who is good at analysis along with topology.
Except for the fact that I don’t have much time.
The date that Perelman posted the proof of the Poincaré conjecture on arXiv was November 11, 2002.
This means that the major’s sister must prove Poincaré’s conjecture within the next four years and 11 months.
I asked my sister to challenge the Poincare guess.
“How much time do you expect?”
“I think we will make a decision within five years.”
fortunately it is
Professor Park nodded in response to her sister’s answer.
“Yeah, it would be better to set a target time like that. After two or three years of research in a stagnant state, you can get used to the stagnant situation later. This is really bad for researchers.”
Perhaps it was the advice of Professor Park, who has been holding the Riemann hypothesis for over 30 years, I felt a sense of weight in each word.
I opened my mouth.
“Your sister will do well. And a fever in physics… .”
When I was about to tell you to check the second law of thermodynamics, I shut my mouth.
For reference, Perelman used the concept of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, in his proof.
“What physics?”
I shook my head at my sister’s question.
“it’s nothing.”
The moment my sister was about to ask me again with a mischievous expression, Professor Park said.
“Doctor Yoon. How long are you staying in Seoul?”
“I am leaving on January 17th.”
“Then let’s not talk like this, let’s have a seminar before Dr. Yoon returns to the United States. I’m curious about what I’ve been doing so far, and I think it will be of great help to our graduate students.”
“Professor, how about next Tuesday?”
“Five! good! So let’s do it on Tuesday morning.”
“Yes, I will email you the title of the presentation tomorrow.”
When I got home that night, I washed up and lay in bed.
The major’s sister challenges Poincare’s guess.
Knowing the answer, what should I do?
Should I help my sister prove it?
Or is it right to just let my sister challenge herself?
Once upon a time, my sister helped me find errors in McLean’s theory.
The result was a great success, and the older sister who solved the error developed it into the Yoon-Schultz theory.
The reason I gave my sister a hint at the time was to help her uncover errors in McLean’s theory, so that Mike Schultz would later take his own life.
But now things are different.
If I teach my sister how to prove Perelman, it’s like stealing Perelman’s idea and giving it to her.
Grigory Perelman.
Last life his nickname was an eccentric mathematician.
Although he insisted on living in seclusion by refusing all interviews with the press, and refusing a $1 million prize, the real reason he was called a geek was his rejection of the Fields Award.
The Fields Medal is called the Nobel Prize in mathematics and is the highest honor for a mathematician.
There is a hidden story behind Perelman’s rejection of this Fields Award.
In the process of testing Perelman’s proof method, there was a story that an elder mathematician at Harvard University disparaged his proof method and tried to attribute the proof to his colleague.
By rejecting the Fields Medal, Perelman sounded an alarm at the disgusting behavior of mainstream mathematicians, who insisted on taking the work of others and turning them into their own.
What would he say to me if I could meet Chae Jung-ho from the past life, and teach him Perelman’s proof?
Will he say thanks to me?
Tuesday after a week.
It’s the day of the major’s sister’s seminar.
I made an appointment to go to Korea University with my sister, and I was waiting for her at the Namseo-dong subway station.
“Hey, it’s Jeongho!”
“Who are you… !”
Seeing my confused expression, my sister smiled and said.
“What do you find so strange?”
“Oh oh! Noona dresses like this, so she looks like Professor Jin—Ja.”
Come to think of it, it’s the first time I’ve seen my sister put on makeup and wear a suit.
When I arrived at Korea University with my sister, there were about 20 people in the math and seminar room.
Professor Park Soo-soo briefly introduced the major’s sister, and her presentation began.
As expected, my older sister started the presentation with the Yoon-Schultz theory.
After a brief explanation of the anecdote of finding the error in McLean’s theory and the background of Yoon-Schultz’s theory, which was created to overcome the error, the older sister continued to present her research at Texas State University.
The first was a simple example to explain the basic concept of the Yoon-Schultz theory, and the second was another example to explain the characteristics of non-differentiable functions by applying the Yoon-Schultz theory in a three-dimensional space or more.
And the older sister changed the content of the presentation and began to explain Poincaré’s conjecture.
uh… ! what?
Is the content of the Yoon-Schultz theory all about two examples?
My sister’s presentation ended with a brief talk about how to approach the Poincare conjecture in the future.
The question-and-answer session began, and a young professor raised his hand and opened his mouth.
“I’ve seen good examples of application of the Yoon-Schultz theory. But are there no research results that expand the theory further?”
It was a key question, and it was something I was also curious about.
The core of Yoon-Schultz’s theory is to define a new non-differentiable function in an n-dimensional vector space.
After the transformation into the new vector space is completed, the next research is to generalize the properties of the transformed function in each dimension.
In other words, this is the first research topic that my sister would have started at Texas State University.
Two and a half years have already passed, so there must be research results, but this story was not mentioned at all in the announcement of the major sister.
The major sister opened her mouth with a short sigh.
“Actually, it is not that there are no research results, but it is difficult to present them now.”
“What do you mean? Are you saying that the results of the study have not been released yet?”
My sister said with a slightly perplexed expression.
“sorry. That’s a situation where it’s difficult to give details.”
what?
this is kinda weird
When the seminar was over, the major’s sister and I had lunch with Professor Park Bo-soo.
During the meal, Professor Park carefully opened his mouth.
“Doctor Yoon. It seems that Yoon-Schultz theory research was interrupted in the middle. What happened?”
The major older sister put the spoon down on the table and opened her mouth with a short sigh.
“I had some bad luck.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had even finished writing a thesis with my student, and a similar thesis came out elsewhere.”
“ah… ! okay? how similar are you? Even if there are similar papers, if you explain the differences from the papers well, it would be possible to publish them elsewhere… .”
“… .”
“You can think of the person concerned as the same thesis, but everyone has a slightly different opinion. So even if it’s the same theory, if you look closely, it may be completely different.”
My sister shook her head and said.
“no. It was exactly the same article. I was very surprised to see that too. There are many more sentences that are the same, even to Mr. Toh.”
“Did that really happen? That’s really cool.”
The older sister said in a self-helpful voice with a long sigh.
“I think there really is such a thing as causality and retribution.”
Professor Park Soo-Soo asked with a curious expression.
“What do you mean?”
“During my PhD, I had my first thesis.”
“Yoon-Schultz Theory?”
“No, that was the paper that came out right before that.”
“ah… ! Are you talking about finding that error? What theory was it called?”
“It was McLean theory.”
“right! But what does McLean theory have to do with causality?”
“Because that McLean theory was created by a researcher named David McLean.”
Professor Park nodded, and the older sister continued.
“I met him at a conference. But he said… Because of my first thesis, he said he was rejected for his PhD.”
Professor Park waved her hands at her sister’s words and said,
“Uh-huh! Dr. Yoon! You should never think like that.”
“I know. He was wrong. However, the human mind is not like that. I felt sorry for him at the time, and I didn’t know what to do.”
After a moment of silence, Professor Park opened his mouth.
“But what does causality mean?”
“ah… ! You said that a thesis similar to the thesis my student was preparing this time came out, right?”
Professor Park nodded silently, and the older sister continued.
“He wrote the paper, David McLean.”
“… !”
The moment I heard David McLean’s name, an incident occurred to me at Yunseong Soft three months ago.
A record of malicious code that entered the Yunseong Soft server from the major’s older sister’s computer.
Of course, nothing is certain.
But it feels really bad.
In particular, at the words of my older sister that even Toshi is the same sentence, Dr. The words of Bruce Oldman came to mind.
‘The only explanation for an identical sentence in different papers is plagiarism.’
(The only way to explain the existence of the same sentence in another paper is plagiarism.)
When lunch with Professor Park was over, I told my major sister.
“Sister, are you busy today?”
“Yeah, I was going to meet my friends after a while.”
“not. Even if you are busy, there is a place to go with me now.”