As vice dean of the Xia Academy of Sciences' mathematics institute, Zhang Ping was an authority among authorities in China's field of nonlinear partial differential equations.
He had achieved especially remarkable results on the Navier-Stokes Equations.
For example, in his work on the well-posedness of the three-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes system, he had introduced an entirely new class of negative-index B-S-type function spaces and proved that when two components of the initial velocity in the three-dimensional anisotropic Navier-Stokes Equations were sufficiently small, a unique global solution existed.
He had no shortage of similar achievements. It was no exaggeration to call him the scholar who had studied the Navier-Stokes Equations most deeply in China's mathematical community.
But that was precisely why he knew how far he remained from solving the problem completely. It was a gulf that stretched to the heavens!
A gulf no mortal could cross!
As he saw it, even a thousand or ten thousand outstanding mathematicians working together could not solve it. Unless Gauss were reborn...
Well, he was not actually certain Gauss could solve the Navier-Stokes problem, but in terms of sheer talent, Gauss stood the best chance.
In academia, a genius could achieve more in a single morning than countless mediocre scholars managed in a lifetime of research.
It was tragic, but it was reality. He considered himself a mediocre scholar, merely a little more hardworking and a little luckier, and had thus barely produced a few insignificant results.
"If this young man really has proved the Navier-Stokes Equations..."
He suppressed the thoughts surging through his mind, scrolling with one hand while using the other to work through calculations on a sheet of white paper.
While he buried himself in the proof, scattered discussions of Huang Tian's new paper finally began to appear in the outside world.