Chapter 144
After eating all my breakfast, I came back up to my room.
I fiddled with a kids' phone configured for roaming so I could make calls locally.
I was checking the ICM schedule.
The ICM—the International Congress of Mathematicians.
This wasn't an event that ended after a single awards ceremony; it was more like an international conference where mathematicians from around the world gathered for over a week to present their research, meet one another, and hold discussions.
That's why it was important to know what happened on which day before heading there.
I'd already exchanged emails with the organizers about arrangements for the awardees, but they had asked me to contact them directly after I arrived.
I called the number they'd provided.
Brrring- Brrring-.
After several rings, a woman's voice came through.
“Yes, this is the International Congress of Mathematicians office.”
“Hello, I'm Yoo A-yeon!”
“…Oh my, are you Professor Yoo A-yeon?”
The voice on the other end rose slightly.
“Ah, you've arrived! We've been waiting for you. Was your trip all right?”
“Yes, we made it safely. I arrived at the hotel yesterday afternoon.”
“That's a relief. Then I'll go over the detailed schedule. Can you take notes right now?”
“Yep! Just a moment!”
I opened my notebook and set my cute bunny pencil case neatly beside it.
Ready.
“First, registration is at the registration desk on the first floor of the convention center. There is a separate counter for invited speakers, so please go there.”
“Yes.”
“And the opening ceremony is at nine o'clock next Monday morning. We ask all awardees to arrive by eight.”
“Eight o'clock?”
“Yes. We need to show you to your seat and go over the route you'll take.”
Scratch-scratch-.
I wrote down everything she said.
“And on the day before the opening ceremony—in other words, Sunday at one in the afternoon—there will be a pre-briefing for the awardees.”
“A pre-briefing?”
“Yes. We'll explain the award order, the stage movements, and how to respond to the media. You'll also get to greet the other awardees there.”
“Wow! Really?”
I paused my pen hand for a moment.
The other awardees.
This time, three people besides me would be receiving the Fields Medal.
I'd seen various names mentioned online as possible candidates, but even I didn't know who the actual recipients would be.
Thump-thump-.
Ba-dump-ba-dump-.
The moment I heard that, my heart began racing, and excitement welled up.
Whoever they turned out to be, each was a mathematician whose achievements were impressive enough to earn recognition from the International Mathematical Union.
Just thinking about chatting away with them about their fields and how they'd solved their problems already had me thrilled!
“Professor Yoo A-yeon's invited lecture is at two o'clock on Wednesday afternoon. It will last an hour, including the Q&A.”
“Wednesday at two. Got ittt.”
“Yes. If that feels like too much, we can adjust it.”
“Nope! It's totally fine!”
I answered quickly.
An hour would be plenty.
If anything, it might not be enough time to say everything I wanted to.
“And there's one more thing I'd like to mention.”
“Yep?”
“Please keep it confidential until the announcement is made at the opening ceremony. You may have told your family, and that's fine. But absolutely no telling the media or anyone outside.”
“Aha, okaay!”
I answered with great enthusiasm.
I'd worked so hard all this time to keep it from being discovered.
No problem whatsoever!
✒️✒️✒️
After the call, I looked down at my notebook.
Sunday, one in the afternoon: pre-briefing for the awardees.
Monday, arrive at eight in the morning; opening ceremony at nine.
Wednesday, two in the afternoon: invited lecture.
I stared at that schedule for a long while.
There were four days left until the opening ceremony.
In front of countless mathematicians, the name Yoo A-yeon would be called out.
Just imagining it made my heart go thump-thump-.
“A-yeon, did you check the schedule?”
Mom asked as she came out of the room.
“Yep! I wrote it all down!”
I held up my notebook.
✒️✒️✒️
Sunday at one in the afternoon.
Pitter-patter-.
I held Mom's hand as we headed to the convention center.
Dad and Arin stayed at the hotel.
Only one companion was allowed into the awardees' pre-briefing.
“Have fun, Sis!”
“Yep!”
In front of the hotel, Arin waved both hands enthusiastically.
“Don't let anyone there beat you!”
“I'm not going there to compete.”
“Don't let them beat you anyway!”
“Hehe, okay.”
I waved back with a smile.
✒️✒️✒️
The venue was a huge convention center in the heart of Philadelphia.
A gigantic banner hung at the entrance.
[International Congress of Mathematicians 2027]
“Wow…”
I tilted my head all the way back and looked up at the banner.
The opening ceremony was tomorrow, but quite a few people had already gathered in the lobby.
There were people coming in with suitcases, people lined up in front of the registration desk, and people sitting on the lobby sofas with their laptops open.
They all looked different, too.
There were blond people, black-haired people, white-haired old men, and people who looked like graduate students about twenty years older than me.
The languages being spoken around me were all different, too.
Yet all those conversations had mathematical terms in common.
Hilbert spaces, cohomology, moduli spaces… and so on.
I felt the corners of my mouth slowly creeping upward.
‘Everyone here is a mathematician!’
It was like everyone in the world who liked math had been picked out and gathered in one place.
“Mom. This place is awesome.”
“It is.”
Mom also looked around the lobby and smiled softly.
“It's my first time in a place like this, too. I'm excited.”
✒️✒️✒️
The briefing was held in a meeting room upstairs.
When we got off the elevator, an employee was standing in front of a door at the end of the hallway.
“Excuse me, may I ask your name?”
“I'm Yoo A-yeon!”
The man gave me a welcoming smile.
“Nice to meet you, A-yeon Yoo! Please come in this way.”
The meeting room was smaller than I'd expected.
In the middle was a long table, with a screen mounted on the wall.
Several people were already sitting around the table.
They all turned their heads at once.
Then they saw me standing in the doorway.
Name: Yoo A-yeon.
Age: seven.
Height: 119 centimeters.
IQ: 160.
The mathematician who had solved the Riemann theorem!
That super-genius, Yoo A-yeon, had appeared clutching her mother's hand.
As soon as everyone saw me, the meeting room fell silent for about a second.
“…”
The first person to break the silence was the man sitting by the window.
“Oh! Finally!”
He pushed his chair back and sprang to his feet.
He was a big man with curly brown hair and a neatly trimmed beard.
Then he strode over and dropped to one knee in front of me.
Kneeling, he was exactly eye level with me.
“Nice to meet you! You're Professor A-yeon Yoo, right? I'd only seen you in photos, but you're much smaller in person!”
“Yeees. That's right.”
“I'm Nathan Cross. I'm from Philadelphia. Ah, I work in Boston, but I was born here.”
Nathan Cross.
The moment I heard the name, I recognized it.
It was the name of one of the candidates being mentioned for this year's Fields Medal.
I'd even looked up and read one of his papers myself.
He was the person who had proved universality in random matrix theory.
“Ah! Random matrices!”
“Oh, you know about them?”
“Of course! The paper in which you proved universality! I read it too!”
“Haha! I'm honored!”
Professor Cross laughed loudly.
“Actually, you were the person I most wanted to meet. Do you know why?”
“Um…”
I thought for a moment.
Random matrices and the Riemann theorem.
There was one very famous connection between the two.
“Is it about the spacing between the zeros of the zeta function?”
“…!”
Professor Cross's eyes widened.
“The distribution of the spacings between the zeros of the Riemann zeta function looks similar to the distribution of the spacings between the eigenvalues of random matrices.”
“That's right! Exactly!”
Professor Cross cheered.
This is actually a very famous anecdote in the mathematical community.
They say that several decades ago, a mathematician studying the spacings between the zeros of the zeta function happened to meet a physicist during tea at a research institute.
When the mathematician showed the physicist the formula they'd found, the physicist was startled and reportedly said:
—That’s the same as the distribution of energy-level spacings in atomic nuclei, isn't it?
A number-theory problem about the distribution of prime numbers, and random matrices used in nuclear physics.
Two fields that seemed to have nothing to do with each other were, astonishingly, drawing graphs with the same shape.
It was a phenomenon far too strange to dismiss as mere coincidence.
As this became known in the mathematical community, people began discussing ways to transform the Riemann theorem into a quantum energy-level problem and solve it.
And that ultimately led to the Hilbert–Pólya approach—the approach I used to prove the Riemann theorem.
There's a whole historical progression behind it!