Silence flowed through the studio. Marcel was the first to speak.
“An interesting story. What results might have emerged if Ramanujan had grown up in a proper environment? It’s a question mathematicians have been imagining for a long time.”
Clara nodded.
“If we judge only by the scale of his talent, he’d be someone who could contend with Newton for first place in all of history. Come to think of it, Newton wasn’t exactly a diligent mathematician either.”
Evan burst into loud laughter.
“Hahaha! A Newton who didn’t fall into alchemy and theology, a Ramanujan with a good environment. Just imagining it makes my heart race. If things had been like that, what could they have accomplished?”
Anton wore a meaningful expression.
“I can’t say for certain, but I’m sure of one thing. The world would never have been what it is now. And perhaps we already know someone who can turn that supposition into reality. Viewers, in just a few years, you’ll realize that my words were not mere bluster.”
Evan looked into the camera and spoke in a gentle voice.
“If what you say is true, Doctor, then perhaps we are witnessing the moment a new page in the history of mathematics is being turned. I sincerely thank the three of you for taking your precious time despite your busy schedules.”
Less than an hour after the broadcast aired, social media caught fire.
[The Second Ramanujan to Appear in Five Thousand Years of Mathematical History!]
In particular, this video clip with its provocative title spread across the world with subtitles in various languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, and Hindi.
└Ramanujan was like a gift from God. Though humanity never got to make proper use of him.
└I didn’t know who he was, so I looked him up. He was incredible.
└You don’t know Ramanujan? As an Indian, I can’t tolerate that! He is the saint of mathematics!
└If it weren’t for us, the world would still be solving equations with Roman numerals or Chinese characters. India is the home and holy land of mathematics.
└What a joke. So how many Fields Medals do you have?
└Looked it up and it’s two lol. And one of them isn’t even an Indian citizen. Basically one.
└Same level as Korea, then? lolololol
└It can’t be helped that India has few winners of the three major mathematics prizes. Most geniuses have to get jobs in Silicon Valley and feed their families.
└Maybe Srinivasa Krishnan of Team Apex will bring home another one?
└I’m Indian too, and in our country there are about a thousand kids the media has named the Next Ramanujan. They were all terrible, so it was unpleasant. Looks like foreigners found a proper candidate. If you want to use that name, come back after solving at least one Millennium Problem like Yu Seoha.
* * *
A temporary closure sign was hung on the study café.
Trucks carrying professional personnel and equipment came to a stop in front of the café.
Whirrrr—
A special coating process to minimize contact with air and prevent discoloration from ultraviolet rays. Behind them, low-reflection tempered glass worth tens of millions of won was waiting, loaded onto a crane.
“Thank you, sir.”
“It’s nothing. Please continue to protect this place from now on.”
Woohyun had purchased the café building.
Since it was a small building on the outskirts of Daejeon, it was not a great burden, but the landlord’s greed had been a variable.
When the landlord threatened that he would not sell unless he received ten times the market price, Woohyun had to resolve the situation through a lawyer.
“My client says he will restore the wall to its original condition before leaving.”
The landlord’s complexion turned ashen. After confirming that, the lawyer smoothly held out the documents in front of him.
“This is the final offer. It’s better than the market price, so let’s end it at this.”
In the end, he stamped his registered seal with trembling hands.
It was a generous price compared to the market value, but Woohyun did not find the money the least bit wasteful. There was only one thought in his mind.
‘This cannot be allowed to become someone’s private property.’
It took three days for the work to be completed.
Only after the final glass panel was installed and the workers left the café did the interior finally become quiet.
Step, step.
Woohyun slowly walked along the walls inside.
With the lighting softly illuminating them, it felt as though he had come to a museum. He stared intently at the wall. The handwriting visible beyond the glass looked neat, just as Seoha’s handwriting should, but at the same time, it also seemed alive.
‘What on earth did you see?’
Equations he still could not understand.
Scrape.
He quietly pulled over a chair and sat down.
“Thirteen of them…”
The number of conditions that had to be cleared for the conclusion Seoha intended to hold.
It was a theorem that existed under no fewer than thirteen assumptions. And each of those assumptions carried a weight that would not be out of place being called a difficult problem in itself.
‘What in the world are you planning to do with this…?’
A thought suddenly came to him.
Mathematicians were a breed who felt ecstasy in solving problems others did not know. And now that all of this had already been revealed to the world…
Would they really sit still?
“I suppose I should make a few calls.”
Woohyun muttered with a small laugh.
* * *
The academic world was quieter than expected.
Just as The Planet had feared, skepticism dominated the situation.
While mathematicians acknowledged the achievements Seoha had made so far, they drew a line this time, saying it was a hasty conclusion.
“It’s not as if an official paper has been released, is it?”
“It was only a sketch on a somewhat large scale. Haven’t we all had experiences where we poured out ideas on impulse?”
But their true feelings were different.
Photos of the equations were already circulating through various channels, and a post in which someone had organized them became the most shared post on mathematics communities within days.
Naturally, the most cynical side was the fields of engineering and computer science.
[The Biggest Incident in the Mathematical World This Year]
[I don’t get it. Why is everyone making such a fuss? Even an outstanding mathematician can obviously be wrong.]
The response did not end there.
A few days later, a prominent editor-in-chief in the field of computer science contributed a short column to a magazine.
[If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It.]
The column, which took as its title a maxim developers constantly used in the field, was humorous, but its contents had an edge.
To them, this controversy sounded empty from the very beginning.
The code they wrote every day moved civilization. The world made in Turing’s language was running perfectly fine even at this very moment, and yet it was not complete?
[It seems the mathematicians want to have fun among themselves, but please refrain from dragging the field into it.]
“Hmm.”
Quirin Dusk, Abel Prize laureate and professor of mathematics at Harvard.
He frowned at the monitor as if displeased.
On the desk before him lay an unfamiliar book his teaching assistant had left behind.
“The Thirteen-Step Conjecture of Seoha”
At some point, it had become an item frequently seen on campus. It was absurd. It wasn’t the Thirteen Steps to Hell or anything.
The author’s identity was clearly embedded in the title, but it was a strange document that had never been formally published. It had begun when someone turned the equations on the wall into a PDF and distributed it.
Then it was printed and bound, until finally, it had even been made into a plausible-looking book.
“What on earth is Dean Whitman doing?”
He could have easily brought this situation under control.
One word cautioning against excessive enthusiasm for an unverified conjecture would have been enough. Seoha, too, surely had not intended to present this seriously.
And yet there was no word from either of them.
Whenever Whitman was asked a question, he smiled and avoided giving a direct answer, while Seoha had issued no official statement whatsoever since that day.
Rustle.
He flipped through the pages.
A provocative preface written in large letters entered his eyes.
[Yu Seoha said that the Turing machine cannot fully contain this universe.]
“Ahh!”
It was a preface far too superstitious to be trending at Harvard, the front line of intellect.
He clutched his head in despair.
“This is serious.”
A book that could only be described as a strange document was gradually becoming popular.
He could guess the reason.
To young students of mathematics, Seoha’s existence must be more than a syndrome. From a young age, he had solved difficult problems that established scholars could not, and at last, he had even proven the Riemann Hypothesis, the Holy Grail of mathematics. How could they not idolize him?
“Still, not like this. It can’t be helped.”
Mathematics must always stand upon cold, hard logic. Not upon some superstitious belief like this.
Quirin resolved to take the lead himself and settle this chaotic situation. He picked up his phone and left a message in his network.
* * *
The next morning, ten people gathered in his office.
Graduate students and postdocs he had chosen personally. They were among the most outstanding talents in Harvard’s mathematics department.
“We are going to find a counterexample.”
On the table lay several copies of “The Thirteen-Step Conjecture of Seoha,” which he had gathered as if confiscating them from students.
He spoke with a solemn expression.
“Seoha is by no means a sloppy mathematician. I read the book yesterday as well, and each and every assumption contained extremely complex meanings.”
Those gathered in the office nodded.
“The thirteen assumptions in the book are all independent. But at the same time, they are also chained together. Which means that if even one of them collapses, it is immediately over. It was only a sketch, not a proof, so it makes no sense for there to be no flaws.
What is certain is that even geniuses sometimes make mistakes. Especially when they are in a hurry. What we must do is bring this abnormal, cult-like atmosphere to a mathematical conclusion as soon as possible.”
Bang!
He struck the table hard with his palm.
“One counterexample will be enough. If we publish just that, the situation will die down on its own.”
“Yes, sir!”
The students’ expressions brightened.
Finding a counterexample was far easier than proving something true. There was no need to construct logic; all they had to do was find a single hole.
An Abel Prize laureate and respected professor himself was forming a team to take action. If they produced a result here, that alone would become a career achievement worth boasting about.
Of course, the fact that they could land a blow on that annoying MIT was also one of the important reasons.
Quirin opened the book.
“Step 1: In a continuous topological space, the density of branch points cannot be countably measured.”
“We will focus all our efforts on this one. As for the period… one week should be enough.”
Everyone nodded with determined expressions.
* * *
Quirin’s office.
For the first three days, the students were elated. They thought that if they simply latched onto the phrase “countable measurement,” a counterexample would soon pop out according to the basic principles of measure theory.
But on the fourth day, Liam, the most capable postdoc among them, put down his chalk with trembling hands.
“Professor, this is strange. Every time I substitute a counterexample, the density function of the branch points Seoha set up diverges in a subtle way.”
Quirin rose from his seat and stood before Liam’s blackboard.
Equations filled it densely.
The approach Liam had attempted was clever. He had tried to use countable additivity in measure theory to separate the set of branch points into a finite number of pieces.
Quirin picked up a piece of chalk and pointed to one part of the equation.
“You mean it diverges here?”
“Yes. No matter what I try, an interval where the measure cannot be defined inevitably appears at this point.”
The surrounding students began gathering one by one in front of Liam.
As if they had much they wanted to say, they all began taking out the problems they had been clinging to and comparing them.
“I don’t understand. Why is it so hard to find a counterexample?”
“The deeper we dig, the more solid the structure becomes. I started to feel like we were doing something wrong.”
Murmur, murmur.
Among them, one student quietly raised a hand and said,
“Could it be… that Seoha was right? Not just about this, but about all thirteen steps? If so, what would happen?”
Unfortunately, it was a question no one could answer.