Hua Academy of Sciences.
Mathematics Research Institute.
Sitting at his desk and reading the paper, Director Dai Huohong narrowed his eyes, stroking his sparse, nearly nonexistent beard as he praised it lavishly.
"Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant!"
Unlike Professor Faltings.
After seeing the proof of the ABC Conjecture, Director Dai's reaction was remarkably frank. It took him less than ten minutes to skim through the paper from beginning to end before he began showering Lu Zhou with praise from afar.
Academician Xiang Huanan, sitting on the sofa, could no longer stand listening to him and could not help but complain.
"What exactly are you calling brilliant over there?"
Closing the paper, Director Dai said with a cheerful smile.
"Of course I mean Academician Lu's paper. What else could it be?"
Academician Xiang: "..."
He had wanted to tease him by saying, "Do you even understand what he wrote? Why are you going on about how wonderful it is?" But in the end, he held back the urge to mock him and changed the subject.
"A while ago, I told you not to rush around poaching people and to wait and see what happened at Jinling University. You didn't listen. Now look at this—Academician Lu led his team and solved the problem himself. Where are you planning to place all those Chinese number theory professors you poached from overseas institutions?"
"They've already been poached, so we'll keep them. What else can we do?" Director Dai was quite open-minded and did not feel he had lost out. Smiling, he said, "We can't just kick them aside because the problem's been solved, can we? Besides, the money for recruiting them came from the Ministry of Science and Technology's special funding, so it won't take resources away from the institute's other projects. What if we need