Wei Shen is a legend in the history of mathematics competitions and a rising star in the academic world. There are too many legends about Wei Shen. The editor (Han Jingjun) is fortunate enough to have known Wei Shen for more than ten years. Now I present a short biography of the leader for the readers.
1 Wei Shen is born
Time goes back to the 2008 Mathematical Olympiad National Training Team, location: Mudu Middle School, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province. When Wei Shen was a freshman in high school, he was selected for the Mathematical Olympiad national team with a good result of third place in the training team. That was the first time that the editor had the honor to witness Wei Shen's style. Wei Shen's gestures and aura of greatness left a deep impression on the editor. Since I can still accurately recall the time and place of our first encounter after 12 years, the editor feels it is necessary to reward myself with a chicken drumstick. Wei Shen did not know the editor at that time, which is in line with the general rules of acquaintance between big men and unknown people. See also the story of Princeton University professor Zhang Shouwu who moved his "God" Faltings.
The difference between Wei Shen and other masters in the competition world is that,He has never participated in any training and was an unborn genius before that. Many problem-solving methods are self-created and are often simpler than the standard solutions. They are known as "Wei's Methods".Some of the miraculous proofs produced by him make people feel like a fairy from heaven. This may also be the charm of mathematics. Everyone in the coaching staff of the national training team was amazed by Wei Shen's talent in mathematics. Professor Leng Gangsong once used the phrase "he is so powerful that he can conquer the world" to describe Wei Shen's problem-solving as if he were a hero on the battlefield who championed the three armies.
The most difficult problem in the 2008 International Mathematics Olympiad (IMO) was the final plane geometry problem. Wei Shen's method was actually purely algebraic, and the solution was 4 pages long. It is said that it took the deputy leader of the national team three hours to decipher Wei Shen's proof. His impression after reading it was that "there is no way out despite the mountains and rivers, and there is a bright future in another village." Wei Shen lived up to expectations and won the 2008 IMO gold medal with a perfect score. That year, there were only three perfect scores in the world. Wei Shen stood on top of the world as soon as he was born.
△Wei Dongyi (second from left in the back row)
A year later, Wei Shen played in full form,Won full marks in all the competitions he participated in: China Mathematical Olympiad (CMO), National Training Team Test IMO.He is the only person with a perfect score in the history of the national training team test so far, and is also one of only two people in the world with a perfect score in the 2009 IMO.
△Wei Dongyi (front row, second from right)
It is said that at the IMO that year, Wei Shen even defeated the "Great God of Telunsu Tao" - Terence Tao in a small way. It was the 50th IMO. As a legend in the history of mathematics competitions, Tao Zhexuan was invited to attend the 2009 IMO. The most difficult question was still the sixth question. As a master of problem solving, Tao Shen also wanted to show off his skills outside the examination room. It is reported that the time ratio between Tao Shen and Wei Shen in solving the sixth question was 7:1 (Tao Shen took 7 hours).
There are no challenges in the high school competition. After passing the test, Wei Shen gradually retreated from the world of mathematics competitions, leaving only the legend of Wei Shen in the world - a record that no one can surpass and his final work - "Wei Dongyi's Inequality" for future generations to worship and look up to. Wei Dongyi's inequality is a by-product of Wei Shen's "playing" with the Jacobi elliptic function, when Wei Shen was a sophomore in high school.
2 Continue the myth
There is a saying that there are "four major lunatic asylums" in Peking University. The so-called lunatic asylum refers to a department that gathers geniuses and eccentrics. Shuyuan is ranked first among the "four major lunatic asylums", and Wei Shen is undoubtedly the chief sweeper of the "lunatic asylum". After Wei Shen entered university, he gradually changed from a legend in the competition world to a legend in Shuyuan and even Peking University.
It is said that not long after the freshman year, there was an exercise class taught by Wei Shen.
“Everyone in the audience was studying by themselves because they had no idea what he was talking about.
Later, the teacher asked, everyone should understand, right?
A student from the School of Mathematics replied,
Teacher, please tell me again.
The teacher smiled slightly and said,
No,
I didn't understand either. . . "
(Excerpted from the internet celebrity article “The Sacred Cows of Peking University’s School of Mathematics”)
It is also said that there is a semester,
Wei Shen serves as a teaching assistant for a certain course.
The teacher introduced Wei Shen to the students with a smile
"This is your teaching assistant for this semester,
If you have any questions you don’t know, you can ask me.
If I don’t know how, I can ask the teaching assistant.
If even the teaching assistant can't do it, then the question is probably wrong. "
The editor once had the opportunity to ask Wei Shen for help on a mathematical problem that he had been pondering for a long time but could not figure out. He witnessed the miracle of Wei Shen's "instant kill" without using scratch paper. Sometimes Wei Shen's few words were enough for the editor to spend several nights to understand.
In the eyes of the outside world, Wei Shen’s greatest achievement during his undergraduate years is undoubtedlyDuring the summer vacation of my junior year, I won four gold medals in the "Analysis, Geometry, Probability, and Application" Mathematics Competition of Yau Shing-Tung University and the Individual All-Around Gold Medal., coupled with the algebra gold medal he won as a sophomore, Wei Shen became an unprecedented and probably unprecedented Grand Slam player in the history of "Qiu Sai". It is said that there are two questions in a certain individual final, and candidates have half an hour to prepare before the interview. Wei Shen was the only one to ask the second question, and due to time constraints, he did not have time to read the first question before the interview. After obtaining permission from the judges and professors, Wei Shen read the question on the spot and solved the problem immediately after reading. This group of famous expert judges from the world's top universities and scientific institutions were all shocked by Wei Shen's mathematical talent. Although Wei Shen did not know the most knowledge points, they unanimously agreed to award Wei Shen the Gold Medal. The title and myth of "leader" also spread throughout the land of China.
Wei Shen is a very low-key, humble and taciturn person. After the Qiushui competition, he privately told the editor that he was still very weak and needed to make up for it, and the excessive praise on the Internet only added to his pressure. Whenever he hears others praising him, he often says "No," "It's not like that," and praises others, "You are also very good," and "You are really good." Wei Shen is also a "god" who is extremely friendly to humans. Although it is sometimes difficult to understand the "ignorance" of human beings, he always welcomes those who ask him for help in mathematics and patiently answers them.
Wei Shen often shines with the brilliance of humanity:
- He feels that killing is wrong,
So don’t eat meat;
- He feels that the production process of pure water pollutes the environment,
So I often walk for more than 10 minutes to the Neo-Confucian School to get boiled water;
- He feels that it is a waste of electricity,
So put the remote control away;
- He even thinks turning on the light is a waste,
So I often lie on the bed in the dormitory at night,
Thinking about mathematics in the dark,
Let mathematical ideas illuminate mankind.
These noble qualities of Wei Shen make the editor often lament the huge gap between humans and gods. When getting along with Wei Shen, the editor feels that the only advantage he has is his card skills. Wei Shen does not "lie" about his skills when playing cards and playing Werewolf and other board games. This also highlights from the side how upright and kind Wei Shen is.
Three Young Leaders
After Wei Shen graduated from his undergraduate degree, he did not accept the olive branch offered by a prestigious foreign university as some people expected. Instead, he chose to stay at the International Mathematics Center of Peking University and continue his mathematics learning and research under Academician Tian Gang. Perhaps due to his lack of confidence in the domestic mathematics environment, this has aroused some prejudice and doubts about his academic ability on the Internet.
Competitions and scientific research have something in common, but they are also very different. The test questions in the competition are known to previous generations, and the emphasis is on testing students' ability to use skills to solve problems. The exam format is closed book and time-limited. The goal of scientific research is to explore the unknown world of mankind. Sometimes we don’t even know the specific description of the problem. People have to boldly make some conjectures based on the known situation. The research process is very open. People can check any information they have access to and ask anyone for advice. There is no time limit for scientific research, and failure is normal. It requires scientific researchers to have perseverance and determination, be able to calm down, endure loneliness, and not be tempted by the outside world. Sometimes, solving big problems like Fermat's last theorem requires the efforts of several generations. A 100-meter athlete may not win the marathon. Can Wei Shen continue his magic?
Wei Shen responded to the doubters with actions. He obtained his doctorate in just three and a half years and is currently an assistant professor at Peking University. From August 2015 to now, Wei Shen has completed 25 academic papers (data sourced from arXiv), most of which have been published in first-class international journals. In just a few years, Wei Shen has completed his transformation from a "god" in the field of mathematics to a "young leader" in the field of mathematics. Behind this glamor, the hard work and sweat put in by Wei Shen are difficult for ordinary people to appreciate. During my Ph.D., the editor was fortunate enough to study mathematics under the same roof as Wei Shen. Wei Shen's hard work and love and focus on mathematics made the editor feel inferior to him. Living next to Wei Shen, whose talent and diligence far exceed the editor's, the hope of continuing to study mathematics deeply troubled the editor. Fortunately, the Mathematics Center has built an excellent learning environment, created a good academic atmosphere, and provided many good opportunities for all students. Wei Shen was also fully protected from interference from external factors.
here,
The editor wants to do a product placement:
"Welcome to apply for admission to the International Mathematics Center of Peking University."
Wei Shen has a wide range of research interests and has made progress in research fields such as the linear damping problem of the two-dimensional incompressible Euler equation, the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation, and random matrix theory. In the first semester of the second year of his PhD, Wei Shen, Professor Zhang Zhifei, and Dr. Zhao Weiren completed the paper "Linear inviscid damping for a class of monotone shear flow in Sobolev spaces", which was accepted for publication by the top international journal "Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics". The famous French Bourbaki Seminar (French: Séminaire Nicolas Bourbaki) once organized a special seminar to introduce the research work of Wei Shen and others on the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation. Last year, the paper "Small gaps of GOE" co-authored by Wei Shen, Academician Tian Gang and others was accepted by the world's top mathematics journal Geometric and Functional Analysis (GAFA) and published online.
The editor has limited talent and knowledge, cannot understand Wei Shen's masterpiece, and is not qualified to evaluate Wei Shen's academic work. The following content is transferred from the official website of Peking University. "In this paper, they solved the small spacing problem of the classical Gaussian orthogonal ensemble (GOE) in random matrices, proved that the small spacing of the GOE is asymptotic to the Poisson distribution in the limit sense and obtained the asymptotic distribution function of the small spacing. The spacing distribution problem is one of the most important issues in the research of random matrices. The previous results mainly focused on the Gaussian unitary ensemble (GUE), and GOE has few results. This is because the GUE itself has a determinant point process. Such a special structure, but GOE does not, creates new essential difficulties and requires the introduction of new technologies." "The results of the paper have been proven to be universal and are an important progress in the field of random matrix research." "Wei Dongyi is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Mathematics Center. His main research areas are partial differential equations, geometric analysis, etc. He has very strong mathematical analysis and calculation capabilities. He has published more than ten papers in internationally renowned mathematics journals and is a young scholar with great potential."
Wei Shen has also been highly praised and affirmed by top international mathematicians. Professor Lin Fanghua of New York University once said, "Because Wei Dongyi moves so fast and can quickly greatly simplify the methods and results of other people's articles, some big figures dare not easily put their articles online before they are published." In an interview with "Intellectuals", when asked, "Have you ever encountered anything special?" Genius undergraduate?" Academician Tian Gang replied, "There is one who has graduated now, that is Wei Dongyi. I didn't have direct contact with him when he was an undergraduate, but he made great achievements in his first and second years as a graduate student. He is very strong in mathematical technology and is indeed a mathematical genius. "
Of course, there is still a long way to go from "Young Leader" to "Grand Master". The editor hopes that Wei Shen can make major breakthroughs in long-standing issues such as the Navier-Stokes equation and the Einstein field equation as soon as possible. These issues are closely related to the world we live in. Human development requires epoch-making scientists. The editor personally believes that it is the duty of each of us to help real geniuses like Wei Shen grow. The editor also boldly appeals to everyone at the end to please leave a piece of pure land for Wei Shen so that he can immerse himself in the mathematical world he loves.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Leng Gangsong for his guidance during the writing process of this article.
Graduated from high school at the High School Affiliated to Fudan University
Undergraduate student from the School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Class of 2009
2013 PhD students
The highest personal honor for Peking University students
——Winner of the 11th Peking University “Student May 4th Medal”
Now Johns Hopkins University
Postdoctoral fellow and assistant professor J.J. Sylvester
www.nsmath.cn
Machine-translated from the Chinese original 天才之外——教主韦东奕小传 (published 2020-02-20). WeChat original ↗