A Letter from the Clay Mathematics Institute

When Lu Zhou submitted the paper, he had never imagined that the one he sent to Mathematical Annals would cause such a tremendous response.

After all, it was only a preliminary result. It was still far from touching upon the core difficulty of the Yang–Mills Equations. At most, he had merely taken the first step that no one else had taken.

It was not until Academician Lu excitedly grabbed him and fired off a barrage of questions that he gradually realized things were not as simple as he had imagined.

The Yang–Mills Equations held a far more important position in Physics than they did in Mathematics.

Perhaps to the latter, they were merely difficult Partial Differential Equations. But to the former, they represented the first step toward a Grand Unified Theory—the true Holy Grail of modern Theoretical Physics!

Under such circumstances, even the slightest progress could hardly fail to shake the entire field.

After all, since the beginning of the twenty-first century, apart from discovering a few particles that had long been predicted and verifying several pieces of the Standard Model, this field had gone far too long without producing anything "new."

Of course, Theoretical Physicists were clearly not the only ones stunned. There were also the spectators who had learned of the matter through various channels.

In a sense, the latter were even more enthusiastic in discussing it than the former.

Especially after Science magazine published its interview with Professor Fefferman, one of the reviewers, the excitement reached its peak.

Lu Zhou could even hear several students who were clearly not from the Physics department sitting beside him in the cafeteria, looking his way with great interest and whispering among themselves.

And that was not the end of it.

One day, after finishing his Number Theory class, he had