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Award: Alibaba Global Mathematics Competition, Editor: Qubits
Just now, another global mathematics carnival came to an end at China's highest university .
After five months of competition, the list of the top four players in the Ali Mathematics Competition has been released:
Their average age is 22 years old . Among them, Qu Xiaoyu, a 17-year-old child from Chongqing , became the youngest gold medal winner in history. He is already a sophomore in the Mathematics Department of Peking University.
Zhang Shengtong , a frequent visitor to Asai , has won silver medals four times in four participations, and finally won gold this year. He once solved a problem that has troubled the mathematics community for 70 years while he was an undergraduate. The paper was published in the top journal "Annals of Mathematics" .
Li Yixiao and Hao Tianze are both studying for doctoral degrees at Peking University. Among them, classmate Hao performed a talk show directly on the spot.
In addition to the above four, 66 others stood out from the 50,000 contestants and won silver, bronze and excellence awards.
At the award ceremony, Lou Yingen , a 20-year-old boy with ALS who was the representative of the Excellence Award winner, walked to the stage.
He is currently studying physics and mathematics at MIT, studying under Alan Guth, the famous theoretical physicist and founder of the cosmological inflation model. His love and optimism for mathematics and even life aroused warm applause.
The most intuitive feeling of this award ceremony is that more and more young mathematics students of the younger generation are standing on the stage .
They undoubtedly represent the most promising emerging talents in the world in the current basic science field.
In fact, in the five consecutive years that the Ali Mathematics Competition has been held, more than ten young mathematicians, including Wei Dongyi, have emerged.
This mathematics competition that everyone can participate in is becoming a well-known stage to ignite enthusiasm for mathematics, showcase mathematical talents, and discover new mathematical stars.
17-year-old Chongqing baby sets new record as youngest
First, let’s take a look at the awards in this competition. There were 4 gold medals, 6 silver medals, 10 bronze medals, and 50 excellence awards.
Although Peking University accounts for half of the country, other schools perform equally well. For example, Tsinghua University, East China Normal University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, etc.
There are even winners from middle schools, such as Sun Qiyao from Shanghai Middle School.
Next, let’s take a closer look at the strength of these players.
Qu Xiaoyu: The youngest gold medal winner in history
Qu Xiaoyu is a sophomore student in the Department of Mathematics at Peking University. This is the second time that Qu has participated in the Ali Mathematics Competition. Last year, I participated for the first time and won the Excellence Award. I am also the youngest winner in the competition in the past years.
For Qu, the difference between the two competitions is that "last year I did eight hours, this year I only did five and a half hours. This year I can do all these questions." "
In July last year, when he was still a freshman in high school, he represented the national team in the IMO and won a gold medal with perfect scores, and was immediately recommended to Peking University School of Mathematics. I started reading mathematical analysis by myself when I was in the fifth or sixth grade of elementary school, and read it two or three times over two years.
But even so, he admitted frankly, "I'm not a genius at all. I'm a lousy person. The more I learn mathematics, the more I feel that I don't understand too much and I'm very insignificant."
There was also a music program at the awards ceremony.
Li Yixiao: Undergraduate degree reaches senior doctoral level
Li Yixiao, who also has IMO gold medal experience, was born in 2002 and is currently studying for a Ph.D. in Basic Mathematics at Peking University.
The mentor is none other than Liu Ruochuan, the golden generation of that year. His research direction is P-advanced number theory. He will enter Princeton University for exchange studies in late October.
Last year, Li was selected for the second honorary title of "Huaixin Bachelor" in Mathematics at Peking University. At that time, the school stated that his mastery of algebraic geometry as an undergraduate had reached the level of a senior doctoral student in algebraic geometry at a top American university.
According to reports, as early as kindergarten, he was able to find patterns in multiplication and division of two- and three-digit numbers. In junior high school, he was studying high school and college mathematics courses. Li Yixiao lives a simple life, and mathematics is his biggest hobby.
Hao Tianze: The sober joker in the world
Do you want to become a math master like Zhang Yitang?
No, no, I would want to be the one bringing them tea and water.
Hao Tianze, who also won the gold medal, defines himself as a "normal player", neither talented nor hard-working. Currently in the fifth year of master's and doctoral studies in basic mathematics at Peking University, my research direction is differential geometry.
Looking back on his mathematical journey, he said frankly: I am optimistic because I accept failure. The more you fail, the more optimistic you become.
In the first year of high school, I wanted to get the CMO gold medal, but ended up getting the silver medal. In my senior year of high school, I wanted to join the IMO national team, but I didn't make it. I have been accompanying him in the first two Ali Math Competitions, and finally won the bronze in 2021.
Mathematics is a subject that requires accumulation and a lot of digging. At that time, we talked about love and hard work. Being able to stay focused enough on your interests is a very advanced talent.
His mentality has also quietly changed in the past few years since he participated in the competition: the mathematical research system is extremely large, and he believes that it is not necessary to be the top person, as long as he can make a small contribution, he will feel very satisfied.
Zhang Shengtong: Undergraduate solves 70-year problem in mathematics
In the five years of Asai, Zhang Shengtong has really been fighting for five years. When he first took on the challenge at the age of 18, he was going to the United States to study at MIT. As a result, in his freshman year, he worked with a team to solve a 70-year-old problem that has plagued the mathematics community and published it in one of the four major journals, "Annals of Mathematics."
Today, he has graduated from MIT and is pursuing a PhD at Stanford University. In an earlier public interview, he threatened to win a Fields Medal for China. But now he smiled and waved his hand: There is still a big gap between his performance and that of his award-winning predecessors.
In addition to these green faces, there is also the return of a former academic god.
Han Yanjun, the former academic god of Tsinghua University, shocked everyone with “15 perfect scores in 20 subjects, 99 points in 4 subjects, and 98 points in one subject.” Even though he was recommended, he still took the college entrance examination and became the top scorer in science in Anhui that year (2011).
At that time, because I wanted to do scientific research quietly, I chose to disappear from public view. As a result, I won a silver medal in this competition.
Now he serves as an assistant professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematics, Data Science Center, and Department of Computer Science at New York University.
Asai has become more than a dozen mathematicians in five years
It is worth mentioning that there was a special heated debate before the award ceremony.
Mathematics enthusiasts from all over the world, including courier boys, Bilibili UP owners, and popular new mathematics stars, Ph.D. students in the Department of Mathematics at Peking University and IMO Olympiad gold medal winners, discussed in the lecture hall of the Department of Mathematics at Peking University:
Can AI replace math workers ? This is really interesting now that large models are so popular.
The topic of "whether mathematics is useful or not" was also discussed again.
In fact, many current advances in cutting-edge technologies, such as large AI models, computers, IoT, chips, quantum computing, driverless driving, machine learning, etc., all rely on mathematical workers.
As one of the oldest subjects, mathematics is the foundation of all subjects. For example, the question in the finals of this competition is "The connection between a large language model and a certain mathematical formula . "
The teachers of the research group said that the question itself is not difficult, but what they want to express is that mathematics is everywhere in life and can help us understand some complex emerging things that are happening.
The entire technological wave also requires more talents who love mathematics and have mathematical talents to participate.
The Ali Mathematics Competition, which has been open for many years and has no threshold and can be participated by all people around the world, responds to this demand for talents.
In the past five years, it has indeed had a real impact:
First, more people will pay attention to mathematics, so that mathematics will no longer become a carnival for a few people. Since 2018, the Ali Mathematics Competition has attracted a total of 250,000 participants, with contestants covering more than 70 countries and regions.
This year’s contestants accounted for more than 70% of the general public, and 37,000 were non-mathematics-related majors. The oldest participant was 67 years old and the youngest was 7 years old.
For example, Sun Jinyuan, a courier boy born in 1995, participated for the first time.
After working every day, he would set aside an hour or two to delve into mathematics. He once spent two weeks proving the formula of Euler's constant.
Secondly, discover more young scientists . In the five years since the Ali Mathematics Competition was held, more than ten young scientists have emerged.
For example, Su Weijie , associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is the first Silver Medal winner.
Now engaged in cross-research in mathematics and computers, he has won the Sloan Award and the first SIAM Data Science Youth Award, based on his important contributions to machine learning optimization algorithms, data privacy protection, deep learning theoretical foundations and high-dimensional statistics.
His work on convex optimization acceleration algorithms was introduced at length by machine learning guru Michael Jordan in a one-hour report at the International Congress of Mathematicians.
The 2021 Silver Medal winner Xia Mingtao , after graduating from Peking University, went to the University of California, Los Angeles to pursue an applied doctorate, and is now an assistant professor at New York University.
Xia Mingtao also has a hidden identity "up master". He doesn’t have many fans at Station B, but he insists on sharing mathematical modeling and calculations at Station B. In June this year, he graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a PhD. After obtaining the consent and support of his teacher, he live broadcast the entirety of his doctoral thesis defense on Station B:
“ I hope that through online publicity and teaching, using more popular language, we can inspire more people’s enthusiasm and interest in mathematics . ”
The 2020 and 2021 Gold Medal winner Wang Donghao was born in 1994. After graduating from MIT, he came to the State University of New York at Stony Brook and is now an assistant professor at the Simmons Center for Geometric Physics.
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This kind of competition award for discovering young scientists is actually not uncommon. For example, the domestic Green Orange Award and the foreign Sloan Award.
But there seems to be only one award like this that only focuses on mathematics and is open to all people and even the world with zero threshold.
As Zhang Yitang said at the beginning of the competition, "I hope that through this global competition, we can awaken the public and society's attention to mathematics."
Tian Gang , chairman of the Chinese Mathematical Society and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also said, "Mathematics knows no borders. Every year, the Ali Mathematical Competition attracts contestants from all over the world. This cross-cultural gathering and exchange not only enriches the ideas and methods in the field of mathematics , and also promotes international exchanges and cooperation.”
With this model, only by allowing more people to embrace mathematics and delve deeper into mathematics can we truly promote the progress of science and technology in the field of basic science.
This requires long-termism in the true sense, and the five-year Ali Mathematics Competition is just the beginning.
So "Can AI replace math workers?" The answer to the topic is obvious. AI requires more mathematicians. AI will help more mathematicians. AI may also allow more people to become mathematicians.
Just like after AlphaGo, more people began to learn and enjoy Go through AI guidance?
Good stuff to learn, like three times in a row ↓