The IHES mathematics journal enjoyed a highly prestigious reputation in the mathematical world. With an impact factor above 6, it was practically among the very highest of all mathematics journals.
Even the Four Top Journals did not have impact factors as high as theirs.
For example, the Journal of the American Mathematical Society, the lowest-impact journal among the Four Top Journals, had an impact factor of less than 3, while Annals of Mathematics, the highest, had not exceeded 5.
This made the IHES editors rather proud. It showed that the papers published here were truly high-quality, and they even felt that the Four Top Journals only deserved that title because of historical factors.
Otherwise, there would be Five Top Journals.
Perhaps precisely because they were not one of the Four Top Journals, they seemed a little more "approachable," which often attracted overconfident people to submit papers in hopes of getting accepted.
Unfortunately, this made things hard on the editors, because they had to read every submission and reply to each one.
Evans shook his head helplessly. "Time to get to work!"
It did not matter if he could not finish them. Overtime was impossible—he would never work overtime in this life. Today's work could be put off until tomorrow, tomorrow's until the day after; eventually, he would finish it all.
Getting French people to work overtime was absolutely impossible.
With that, he began reading the papers.
Fortunately, the first few papers were basically impossible to get into. Either their conclusions lacked the value IHES required, or they could not even write a coherent abstract.
He rejected them all outright, saving quite a bit of time.
These editors were also IHES researchers. Their abilities might not match those of the true giants, but conducting an initial review of submissions was more than within their capabilities.
Then Evans came to the fifth submission.
"Hmm?"
Evans suddenly froze when he noticed an asterisk next to the title.
This generally meant that the paper had caught Editor-in-Chief Bojielun's attention and had been moved ahead of the queue.
Papers receiving this kind of attention were usually written by scholars with some standing in the mathematical world.
Why not true giants?
Because the editor-in-chief would generally review a giant's paper personally. There was no need for ordinary editors like them to handle it before the editor-in-chief decided whether to send it out for expert review or accept it directly.
Of course, aside from that, another possibility was that it was a paper from someone with connections, allowing it to jump the queue.
Where there were people, there were personal connections. IHES was no exception.
However, because IHES held papers to such strict standards, papers from people with connections could at most jump the queue and enter review earlier. Lowering the standards was out of the question.
They were not a journal like "Advanced in Mathematics," which could practically be called MIT's own school journal—a top-tier mathematics journal where nearly every graduate student graduating from MIT could publish a paper.
This was a benefit for MIT mathematics Graduate Students, giving them a certain degree of employment security after graduation through a top-tier paper.
It sounded nice enough, but... as an IHES editor, Evans looked down on such practices somewhat.
"Let's look at this paper first."
"Hmm... 'Non-singular Analytic and the Absolute Remote Abelian Conjecture'?"
Seeing the title, his brows rose slightly. It seemed rather unusual.
It was actually a paper on Far Abelian Geometry. This author did not seem simple.
Could this be a rising star in mathematics who had caught their editor-in-chief's attention?
Curious, he immediately looked at the submitter's information.
Then he froze.
"Uh...? A... high school student from China??"
Evans found it absurd.
A high school student actually dared submit to their "Publications Mathematiques de l IHES"?
Suspecting that he had not seen clearly, he rubbed his eyes and leaned closer for another look. In the end, he confirmed that he had not been mistaken.
A high school student—well, to be precise, a high school student who had just graduated this year. But graduated or not, even if he were an undergraduate, this was still far too absurd.
"Did Editor-in-Chief Bojielun mark it by mistake?"
Thinking this, he immediately left his seat and headed toward the editor-in-chief's office to verify it.
He knocked.
"Come in." A voice came from inside the office.
Evans opened the door and entered. After seeing Editor-in-Chief Bojielun seated inside, he voiced his question.
Bojielun seemed to have anticipated Evans's question long ago. Smiling, he said, "It wasn't marked incorrectly. It's that paper, written by a high school student. Just review it carefully. Also, don't use a template for the reply email. Give it a brief evaluation instead—explain its strengths and weaknesses."
Evans immediately said helplessly, "Review it carefully? And evaluate it? I suspect I won't want to keep reading after I finish the abstract."
Bojielun laughed. "You go through this sort of thing every day at work anyway. Going through it one more time won't hurt."
"More importantly, Mr. Hu called me. He once came here as a visiting scholar, and he's also from China. We get along quite well. According to him, this paper was written by a mathematical genius he discovered. Maybe you really will be able to keep reading it."
"How about we bet 50 euros?"
Evans twitched his lips. Fine, he understood now. Bojielun simply did not think this paper would be very good either, but since it was a request from an old friend, he could not refuse it, so he had come to torment Evans instead.
Hmm... those 50 euros were probably just being handed to him, perhaps as compensation?
"Fine."
Having accepted the "bet," Evans returned to his seat and resumed reading the paper before him.
The colleague beside him, David, asked, "What did you go to the editor-in-chief for?"
Evans gestured at the computer screen in front of him. "A paper submitted by a high school student. Bojielun gave me 50 euros to figure out how to reject it without hurting the high school student's confidence."
David immediately understood. He patted Evans on the shoulder and wore a sympathetic expression.
Everything was understood without words.
Evans could not be bothered to say more and began reading.
He wanted to see just how good this paper, which Mr. Hu had called the work of a "genius," really was.
As it happened, his doctoral dissertation had been in Far Abelian Geometry. That was probably why Bojielun had assigned this paper to him.
However, Evans had already begun considering how to reject the submission tactfully so that Editor-in-Chief Bojielun's old friend could save face. Yet as soon as he began reading the paper, all those distracting thoughts vanished.
This paper seemed...
Not absurd at all. On the contrary, it was exceptionally good!
As he looked at the rigorous derivations and exposition in the paper, Evans's eyes gradually widened.
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