Was That Paper Written by You?

Peer review was a thankless and demanding task.

First of all, it was unpaid work. Or rather, reviewers were usually compensated in ways unrelated to money, such as acknowledgments from journals, positions on editorial boards, free journal access, discounts on publication fees, and so on.

Second, with only a limited understanding of a particular field, it was no easy task to delve deeply enough into it to judge whether a research result was correct.

It would have been one thing if it were not an important proposition, but for a world-class problem like the existence of solutions to the Yang–Mills Equations, neither its difficulty nor its importance allowed for the slightest carelessness. Even every line of the paper had to be repeatedly scrutinized at the cost of a reviewer's precious time.

Many people accepted such work not only to gain the "academic credentials" of being listed as a reviewer for a prestigious journal, but more out of a scholar's sense of social responsibility and the mission of serving as a gatekeeper for scientific research.

For a scholar who had long since achieved fame and success, Professor Fefferman's reason for accepting the review invitation was probably the latter. However, once he received the paper, all those irrelevant considerations were cast aside.

Starting from the very first line of equations, the fluid calculations seemed to contain some magical power that gripped his gaze tightly.

In particular, the paper's understanding of Differential Geometry in Partial Differential Equations, as well as its application of the L-manifold, was so ingenious that he could scarcely believe it.

He simply could not believe that a young theory, only two years old, could have developed to such a mature state in such a short time.

"...This is simply unbelievable."

It took him nearly fifteen minutes just to turn