Translator: Dreamscribe
Seo-ha walked slowly across the campus.
Maybe it was because of the rain that had fallen overnight, but the air was fresh. The young leaves that had just sprouted shimmered golden as they caught the light.
He leaned back against the bench beneath the great zelkova tree and closed his eyes. A breeze drifted in. The little leaves brushed against one another, making a pleasant scratch scratch sound.
"Seo-ha?"
He opened his eyes and found Ellie beside him.
It had been quite a while since they'd seen each other after the group project, and a wave of gladness washed over him. Hair so blond it was almost dazzling, a face as beautiful as ever.
But she looked far plainer than she had in the past.
"How have you been?"
"Me? Just buried in studying, no time to breathe."
There was a book in her hand.
When he saw the title, he felt embarrassed. Ellie quietly covered the cover with her hand.
[Seo-ha's Paper Collection]
No one knew when it had started.
From the Four Color Theorem to the most recent ST Compression. Someone had gathered up the papers he'd published and bound them into a single book.
And before long it had begun spreading like a fad among the master's and doctoral students. That blaze had spread all the way down to the undergraduates.
Having understood the entirety of Seo-ha's Paper Collection was being treated like a badge of intelligence. To Seo-ha, it was unbearably embarrassing.
The cover of the book was worn from how many times it had been read.
"You could become a fine mathematician, Ellie."
She still hadn't fully unleashed her potential.
Seo-ha had caught glimpses of it, but the molting was something no one could do in another's place.
Ellie smiled brightly and said,
"Hearing that from a genius like you, I'm flattered."
Seo-ha's expression turned uncertain.
"Genius... a genius, huh."
"Why? Don't you think of yourself that way?"
It was a word he'd heard often. It was probably the most common language people used to describe him. But there was something about it that Seo-ha himself had trouble accepting.
A silence fell.
"......"
"Sorry. I was thinking about who actually deserves that title."
"Now I'm curious. Who's a genius in your eyes?"
Seo-ha could answer easily.
A genius was someone who changed the paradigm. If not that, then at the very least they should have achieved something on the order of explosively expanding a concept.
People like Pythagoras or Euclid, in other words.
Archimedes couldn't be left out either. Even in that era he had laid the foundations of calculus with the Method of Exhaustion, and he had also proven the formulas for the volume and surface area of a sphere.
The first person to describe and prove natural phenomena mathematically, with his "Eureka". He could rightly be called the pinnacle of ancient mathematics.
"Your standards are really high. But isn't antiquity too far back to use as a reference? The medieval period would be... the Arab world, then."
Seo-ha's voice grew brighter.
Talking about a subject he loved had him excited.
"Right. I'd consider the ninth century onward a new chapter. It's when Arabic numerals came into use and Al-Khwarizmi laid the foundations of algebra."
His name also became the origin of the word "algorithm".
"It was the golden age of the Arab world, too. They were studying cubic equations actively, after all. It would have been wonderful if the House of Wisdom were still around today. The Library of Alexandria too."
Seo-ha nodded fervently.
"I find that tragic as well. Because of it, Europe was plunged into a dark age that lasted centuries. They were scrambling just to catch up to Persian mathematics all the way until the fifteenth century."
"Come to think of it, isn't that strange? How did the center of mathematics shift back to Europe?"
Seo-ha smiled as though boasting of his own accomplishment.
Descartes.
This man, commonly known as a philosopher, had flung the door to modern mathematics wide open.
His mathematical achievement was just one thing: coordinates.
In Euclidean Geometry a circle is just a circle and a line is just a line. But thanks to coordinates, geometric figures could be expressed in the algebraic language of equations.
"I think this was an event as shocking to the history of mathematics as the introduction of Arabic numerals."
By now Ellie was thoroughly absorbed in his story. To Seo-ha, who had read biographies of mathematicians since childhood, these were his closest friends and the heroes he admired.
She asked with shining eyes,
"After that it must be the people we all know."
Seo-ha nodded.
"Yes. Tying together ancient Archimedes's Method of Exhaustion, the Middle East's algebra, and coordinates, Newton and Leibniz created differentiation."
"And you could say Lagrange's and Fourier's theories were derived from there too."
"That's right. It was the most romantic era in the history of mathematics. The tremendous energy that calculus gave off spread in every direction, and all sorts of theories were created.
And then the 'teacher of all', Euler, and the 'prince of mathematics', Gauss, brought them all together. The peak of modern mathematics and the golden age of expanding knowledge. How happy must the people who lived in that time have been?"
The envy on Seo-ha's face was unmistakable. Ellie felt as though she'd caught a faint glimpse of Seo-ha's secret. His hunger for knowledge was absurdly vast.
The way he savored not just the knowledge itself but the very atmosphere in which it was drawn out made him look almost like an explorer born into the wrong era.
"So what about modern mathematics? Isn't the boundary a little vague?"
Seo-ha's face turned serious. Looking into his deep eyes, Ellie could sense that he held a special feeling about this.
"......Bernhard Riemann.
It would be right to regard Riemannian Geometry as the beginning of modern mathematics. Topology, Complex Analysis, Differential Geometry, relativity, quantum mechanics, everything began from there. And it's astonishing that it's still ongoing even now.
Humanity still hasn't seen the world beyond Riemann."
June 10th, 1854.
The twenty-seven-year-old Riemann stepped up to the lectern at the University of Göttingen. It was a trial lecture to earn his qualification as a professor. He began his lecture. Seated in the very front row was the prince of mathematics, the seventy-seven-year-old Gauss.
With that single lecture, he put an end to the Euclidean Geometry that had ruled humanity for two thousand years.
"Before he was even thirty, Riemann gave humanity a brand-new universe."
Ellie covered her mouth with her hand without realizing it.
Because she felt she understood what Seo-ha ultimately wanted.
Only now did it make sense. Seo-ha's achievements, without even mentioning his age, were great enough to rank among a handful of this century's mathematicians. But what he was looking at was the history of all humanity.
The awkward expression he'd worn at the title of genius had perhaps been only natural. Suddenly a thought flashed through her mind.
"Then your fixation on the Riemann Hypothesis is also...."
Seo-ha nodded.
"Solving the Riemann Hypothesis won't open a new era. But it could at least serve as a hint. Because I think the secret of prime numbers is one of the keys.
So the answer to the first question you asked, Ellie....""
Seo-ha gave a bright smile.
"Compared to them, I haven't accomplished anything yet."
Whoosh-
The wind blew in and shook the branches.
Seo-ha rose from his seat and brushed the dust off his clothes.
He walked away into the distance.
Ellie looked up. The sky now that the rain had stopped looked unbelievably blue and high.
"Even if you solve the Riemann Hypothesis, you'll still be hungry."
A limit.
Something that draws endlessly closer yet never quite touches.
How could anyone defeat a historical great like Newton? It was as if he were chasing a phantom. But if it was Seo-ha, he might someday reach them.
That was the thought that came to her.
***
Zeee, zeee- [TL: the shrill drone of cicadas, signaling the arrival of summer]
Summer had arrived in full stride.
[18-Year-Old Boy Yu Seo-ha Confirmed as Fields Prize Candidate, What Are His Chances?]
[Yu Seo-ha Selected as ICM Plenary Speaker, A New Chapter in Korean Mathematics]
[The Teenager the World Is Watching. Even His Favorite Donut Brand Tops the Search Rankings]
└Son of Okcheon Yu Seo-ha, let's gooo!!
└Why is Seo-ha the son of Okcheon? What did the county ever do for him? He's the pride of our Gifted High School!
└Seriously, what percent chance does he have?
└He's a Plenary Speaker, so I'd say it's fifty-fifty. Honestly he's just too young.
└Heard that American donut place is opening in Gangnam?
└Should I send my kid to study in Okcheon too. Heard the Dodam Elementary kids are crazy good at math.
└But isn't he still an undergrad? The seniority chain's gonna get all tangled up, right? When Seo-ha comes back to Korea the professors are gonna lose face lol
"What a circus. Since when were any of you so interested in math?"
Woo-hyun smirked and closed the browser window.
After the ICM's announcement, the whole country had been turned upside down. It was probably a reaction to the trauma of never having produced results in the basic sciences all this time.
Before the reports went out, Woo-hyun had received a letter from Seo-ha. A short note saying he had a spare invitation and was sending it along. His thoughtfulness brought a smile.
Thanks to it, even he, who had drifted away from academia, could attend the ICM.
-Professor! Just one TV appearance, please. You have a special connection with Yu Seo-ha, don't you. We need a panelist who can explain his accomplishments so far and his chances of winning.
"I'm sorry. I have nothing to say."
Requests had come in several times from the major broadcast networks.
The people he met all grabbed hold of him and asked the same thing. Was a Fields Medal winner really going to come out of Korea?
'More than deserving.'
That was what he wanted to say.
But it felt like getting ahead of himself would scare the luck away, so Woo-hyun was holding his tongue to the extreme. The truth was, there was so much he wanted to ask Seo-ha when he saw him too.
He'd heard a rumor from a colleague from his Princeton days. That academia was rife with talk that the Riemann Hypothesis would soon be proven. How shocked he'd been to hear that the one behind it was Seo-ha.
"Is this thing really getting solved."
Woo-hyun roughly rubbed his face with his dry hands.
An old memory suddenly came to mind. The child who used to play drawing figures in the dirt of Okcheon. From the moment he first saw him, he had known the boy was a vessel beyond his ability to handle.
"Still, it's a real shame about Seo-eun."
He clicked his tongue.
He figured she'd be fine with Seo-ha by her side, but there were things only an adult could give. His letter of recommendation still hadn't found its owner.
"Ah! That guy!"
Click.
When he clicked the mouse, the materials he'd been capturing all this time came up.
[lmaooooo since when is the Fields Prize some random nobody's name? Do whatever you want. If that ever happens I'll go do a Dogeza in Gwanghwamun.jpg]
Tap-tap, tap-tap.
[The villain who called Yu Seo-ha a bubble! I trust you'll keep your promise.]
-I'll set up the spot for you. Let's grovel in repentance.
He couldn't help getting ahead of himself.
So just this much. Since the guy wouldn't know who it was, Seo-ha wouldn't feel any pressure either.
└That's my IP? You captured this?
└Yeah, I told you I'd put it on record.
└Brutal, just brutal. But it hasn't happened yet, has it? An ordinary person like you wouldn't know, but you think those kkondae would give an award to a kid without even a bachelor's degree?
No chance lol At least not this time. If he wins, I'll do a Dogeza, 108 bows. If he loses, you do it. Deal?
Snap!
He had his pride; he couldn't back down.
└Deal!
"Would you look at this guy? Don't tell me he's a mathematician?"
Every single Fields Prize laureate in history had held a doctoral degree. The unease Woo-hyun felt stemmed from this very fact.
And just as he'd expected, the ICM committee members were also deep in deliberation over how to handle Seo-ha.
***
At that same moment, Berlin, ICM Organizing Committee conference room.
A solemn atmosphere hung over the hall. The chairman adjusted his glasses and spoke.
"I never thought I'd be the one saying this. Because I've always believed mathematics should be judged fairly by its results. But!"
He paused for a moment and looked around at the committee members.
"Eighteen! He's breaking the all-time youngest record by nine whole years. Not only does he have no doctorate, he has no master's, no bachelor's degree. Even after he receives the Fields Prize, he'll still be an undergraduate.
Think about it from the perspective of a professor who has to teach a class he's in. How bewildering would that be. With the holder of a Fields Medal sitting right in front of him, what on earth is he supposed to teach?"
From all sides flowed a silence of agreement.
*****
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