From failed candidate to chief scientist

Chapter 42 Project Kratz Conjecture

"This will be your office from now on!"

Early in the morning, Lin Mo was called to the office of the Mathematics Research Center by Zhang Qihua.

Zhang Qihua took Lin Mo for a tour, and then told Lin Mo about the situation that Tian Fangyi introduced to him yesterday.

"Assistant researcher? Not only is there the same subsidy treatment for papers, but also a basic salary of 2000 per month?"

Lin Mo was really surprised.

"It seems that Director Tian is a good person!"

Lin Mo said with emotion.

"Well, Mr. Tian is really good."

Zhang Qihua echoed, and both teachers and students came to the same conclusion.

"By the way, the research center needs to establish a research project and get it up and running as soon as possible. Is there anything you want to say?"

For ordinary teachers and graduate students, it is the teacher who sets the project, explains the direction of the students, and asks the students to do it, but when it comes to Zhang Qihua, facing Lin Mo, who can write top journal papers, Zhang Qihua dare not trust him.

Lin Mo glanced at Zhang Qihua in surprise.

Seeing this, Zhang Qihua thought that Lin Mo had no idea for the time being.

"It's okay. It's not urgent. You can think about it first when you get back. I'll also think about it here."

"By the way, I see you spend all day in the library. What have you been studying recently? Do you have any study problems?"

After talking about business, Zhang Qihua, as a teacher, became concerned about Lin Mo's studies.

"I have been studying the 3n+1 problem recently, and I do have some troubles and problems..."

"3n+1? Kratz's conjecture?"

Zhang Qihua was shocked.

Kratz suspected he knew.

In the 20s, the German mathematician Lothar Kratz, who was still a college student, wanted to find out whether the directed graph whose vertex set is a set of natural numbers and the directed edge set is {(n, f(n)): n∈N} is weakly connected. And the question of how many directed cycles there are on it gave rise to the germination of the 30n+3 conjecture.

In 1950, Kratz announced a conjecture at the World Congress of Mathematicians: Given a positive integer, if it is an even number, halve it; if it is an odd number, multiply it by 3 and add 1, and repeat this operation. After a finite number of steps, you can finally get 1.

This is the Kratz conjecture.

Since then, this problem has been widely circulated around the world, so this problem has many names, such as the 3n+1 conjecture, the odd-even normalization conjecture, the Ulam problem, the Kakutani conjecture, the hail conjecture, and so on.

The exploration of Kratz's conjecture in the mathematics community has been prosperous for a long time. Countless mathematicians have devoted themselves to the research of this problem, one after another, but decades have passed, but no one has been able to prove it.

Some mathematicians even say that within the existing mathematical theoretical framework, the Kratz conjecture cannot be proven.

For this reason, many companies and institutions have offered rewards for Kratz's conjecture.

In addition to the $100 million bounty offered by Holt Labs that Lin Mo saw before, there are other bounties that are both sufficient and expensive. For example, the Japanese company Bakuage released a 1.2 million yen (approximately 600 million soft girl coins) reward. Rewards are offered, and even the domestic education department has set up a bonus of one million yuan.

This is still a large bonus, and there are other relatively small amounts, such as [-], [-], [-], and countless others. Added together, it is also a large amount of money.

If someone can prove Kratz's conjecture, they will be able to get all the bonuses mentioned above, not counting those small ones, and the few big ones alone are close to 1500 million.

"Why are you suddenly studying this?"

"Is it because of the bonus?"

Zhang Qihua naturally knew that there was a large reward for Kratz's conjecture, but he also knew that this was simply a beautiful trap. Once he fell into it, he would probably not be able to climb out, and he would spend all his time on it without getting anything. to what result.

"I just saw it by chance and it seemed quite simple, so I wanted to give it a try and see if I could solve this problem."

"Simple?"

Zhang Qihua was speechless.

"Don't think it is simple because of its simple expression. You have to know that in mathematics, the simpler the expression, the greater the difficulty. This is a deep pit. Listen to the teacher, we will not study this. Let's study another problem."

Lin Mo smiled.

"Teacher Zhang, didn't you just say that our Mathematics Research Center needs to establish a project? What do you think we should establish this project?" "Establish this?"

Zhang Qihua twitched the corner of his mouth.

"Impossible, the school won't agree to this report!"

"Lin Mo, when we do research, we should still be down-to-earth, step by step, and take our time. We can set up a small project first, and then..."

Lin Mo shook his head.

"Teacher Zhang, you can decide for yourself. I still want to study the Kratz conjecture again. I think this is quite interesting."

"Teacher Zhang, if you believe me, just submit this as a project and I will prove it."

"Okay, Teacher Zhang, if there's nothing else, I'll go to the library first."

After finishing speaking, Lin Mo had already left without waiting for Zhang Qihua's response. Today's daily tasks required studying in the library for more than 16 hours, so Lin Mo had to hurry up, otherwise he might not be able to complete today's daily tasks.

Looking at Lin Mo's hurried away figure, Zhang Qihua opened his mouth and closed his eyes weakly.

……

The office of Mathematics Department Chairman Tian Fangyi.

"Director, this is a project that our research center wants to carry out. Please take a look."

Zhang Qihua handed over the project application report in his hands with some trepidation.

"Oh? Lao Zhang, are you fast enough to confirm the project so quickly? The efficiency is pretty good. Let me see..."

Tian Fangyi pushed his eyes on the bridge of his nose and took the project application report.

"An Argument Concerning a Method of Complex Analysis..."

"Lao Zhang, do you want to conduct research on number theory?"

Tian Fang nodded from time to time at first, but as he watched, his face became darker and darker.

Snapped!
Tian Fang slapped the reports on the table one by one.

"Bullshit!"

"Is this the project you chose after careful consideration?"

"You think I can't understand, right? Who are you trying to fool?"

"You think I can't figure out what you want to do if you change your name?"

"You want to prove 3n+1?"

"Are you crazy, or am I crazy?"

Tian Fang stared at Zhang Qihua with a stern expression.

Zhang Qihua looked at Tian Fangyi slightly embarrassed.

"Director, please listen to my explanation..."

"Explain what explain!"

"I think you are just crazy! You think you have become a mathematician because you published a top-notch article, and you want to solve mathematical problems!"

"Who do you think you are? Gauss?"

Zhang Qihua could not refute and could only silently endure Tian Fangyi's output.

After more than ten minutes, Tian Fangyi finally got tired and stopped.

"Okay, come on, explain to me, what exactly do you think?"

"Director, I'm not thinking that our research center was established because of the publication of top journals. If this is a small project, I'm afraid it will make people laugh, so this is why..."

"Arousing ridicule? If you can't research this project, then you are arousing ridicule!"

(End of this chapter)