Chapter 251: Chapter 112 Professor Frank, Would You Like to Be a Reviewer?

Mathematics and physics divide the Earth into twenty-four time zones. When the youth in the Eastern Hemisphere, on this night, seek solace from the closest people to them, the sun is just rising in Princeton.

Lott Degen walked into his office at eight o’clock sharp in the morning.

Although he could completely wait until nine to come, at his age, he not only cannot sleep that long, but also prefers not to listen to the nagging of women at home. He might as well start his day’s work early in the office.

At least sitting in front of his cluttered desk can bring an unparalleled sense of achievement. But at home, wherever it is a little messy, he can only listen to his wife’s endless complaints.

Ironically, Lott Degen has always had a quirk: no one can touch his desk; it must maintain that chaotic aesthetic. Because only this way can he readily find what he needs.

Once the things on the desk become neat, he will need to spend more time searching for exactly what he needs.

Ever since the previous new secretary was directly scolded away for tidying his desk, no one has touched his desk at the academy except himself. But at home, it’s different; the desk in the study is always tidy, no matter what he says.

The older wife is not the same as when she was younger, as if suddenly influenced by a cleanliness obsession, unable to have a single speck of disorder in sight. This also makes the sixty-three-year-old Lott Degen feel oppressed.

Lott Degen has always felt that his chaotic desk is like the N-body problem he has studied all his life. Humans have not yet accurately mapped the trajectories of planets in the Solar System, but there are always ways to predict the approximate positions of these planets at certain times and quickly find them.

The desktop, arranged according to his intentions, seems chaotic, yet like an almost perfect coordinate system, where each item is fixed at some coordinate according to his needs. Not only is it convenient, but it also brings Lott Degen a sense of achievement.

…

Satisfied after sitting at his desk, Lott Degen turned on his computer and first logged into his personal email.

Unknowingly, handling personal matters before public ones has become a tacit principle followed silently by every ordinary person in the Federation.

Even for someone like Lott Degen at his age, it is the same.

In fact, for those who lived through the 1970s and 80s, they mostly do not like the current Federation.

Although the size of the Federation remains vast, its body still seems robust, yet one can clearly feel that something internal is decaying, and the decay is steadily spreading over time.

Lott Degen can even sense this from the soap opera screens.

In his youth, the most popular TV dramas were “Growing Pains,” “Little Britain,” “Rescue Squad,” “Family Affairs,” “Friends,”… and so on, stories that conveyed a positive view of life.

In this era, the TV dramas everyone talks about have become “Shameless,” “Breaking Bad,” “House of Cards,”…

Of course, these are things he cannot change, so he chooses to go with the flow.

After looking through a few emails, he saw an email from Yanbei University’s Tian.

In the past, Lott Degen was not interested in Huaxia, including when he went to the Huaxia Capital in 2002 to attend the International Mathematicians Conference and did not have a good impression of this country. However, this impression began to change two years ago.

In 2022, he was invited to a place in Huaxia called Xiao Zhou to attend the Global Mathematics Forum and deliver a 60-minute lecture at the conference. This mathematics conference was initiated by the Number Theory Conference, a satellite conference of the International Mathematicians Conference, mainly discussing topics on number theory and arithmetic geometry.

And that trip to Xiao Zhou broadened Lott Degen’s horizons significantly.

Before this, Lott Degen only knew that Huaxia had three cities: Beijing, Linhai, and Zhenguan, with no impression of any other city at all. However, it was this city he had never heard of before going there that overturned all his previous perceptions of Huaxia.

The hotel where the conference was held had unmanned bars, food delivery robots, and a developed public transportation system, with large screens next to bus stops broadcasting vehicle information in real-time, and wireless charging equipment on the seats for resting.

The city center streets were clean, with good public order, and someone even invited him for an evening walk.

There were also those ubiquitous skyscrapers and an underground transportation system akin to a future world.

Indeed, he did not return straight to Princeton after the conference ended, but stayed in Huaxia for another week. Accompanied by a doctoral student, he visited three neighboring cities, enjoyed the convenience of high-speed rail, explored the scenery of water towns, and even glanced at the rural areas.

While waiting at Linhai Airport, Lott Degen’s mind was filled with questions—how many truths are there in those damn media’s words and can this still be considered a developing country?

After returning, his attention to Huaxia naturally increased, and everything about Huaxia kept refreshing Lott Degen’s previously deeply ingrained perceptions.

Oh, the doctoral student who accompanied him during the week he stayed in Huaxia was arranged by Tian Yanzhen.

So upon seeing Tian Yanzhen’s email, he immediately clicked it open.

The email was received the morning before yesterday.

However, yesterday he was doing academic exchanges at Columbia University, about a hundred kilometers away, and did not log into his email, so he saw this email today.