Chapter 252: Chapter 112 Professor Frank, Would You Like to be a Reviewer? _2

“Dear Professor Dugen, hello. We’re meeting through this letter…”

Lott Dugen glanced through the letter. It was a recommendation letter, and whether in his capacity as the dean of Princeton School of Mathematics or as the editor-in-chief of the “Mathematical Yearbook,” he often received letters of this kind.

Familiar professor friends frequently wrote him such recommendation letters, the former primarily recommending students to come exchange or study at the Princeton School of Mathematics, and the latter hoping that submitted papers could receive due attention.

Many outside the field of mathematics might not understand the weight that the “Mathematical Yearbook” holds in the international mathematical community. After all, there are not as many people as one might imagine who are truly focused on the development of cutting-edge mathematics. People are more concerned with visible scientific advancements.

For example, brain-machine interfaces, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving…

Thus, for the general public, journals like “Nature” and “Science” are easier to spark interest.

But if one looks at the number of articles published in these journals, it becomes clear how high the difficulty of publishing in the four top journals is.

Last year, only 34 papers were published in the “Mathematical Yearbook,” while 1017 papers were published in “Nature” and 815 in “Science.” Moreover, last year was already a year in which Ann.Math accepted more papers; in leaner years, fewer than ten papers might be accepted yearly.

High renown, few accepted papers—the screening process is naturally quite troublesome.

As editor-in-chief, Lott Dugen knew well that a paper being sent for review within six months of submission was already considered fast. Adding unforeseen factors, such as editors going on vacation or the designated reviewers suddenly failing to deliver or disappearing, along with layout design issues, would further prolong the review process.

Sometimes, due to various reasons, mathematicians wish for their papers to be published quickly and would often send him an email alongside their submission, hoping for special consideration.

Especially in years leading up to the mathematician conferences, he often received similar emails. Because at the quadrennial World Mathematician Conference, the Fields Medal, Nevanlinna Prize, Gauss Prize, Chen Shengshen Prize, and others are awarded…

Whether a paper can be published promptly in an authoritative journal can indeed sometimes affect the awarding of prizes.

Though some mathematicians, confident in their papers, would pre-publish on sites like ArXiv to receive early peer review, the problem is everyone knows that ArXiv lacks authority, and the award review committee members wouldn’t fixate on results published on a preprint website.

And this year it happens to be 2025, with the World Mathematician Conference happening next year. Hence, Tian Yanzhen wasn’t the first to send him such an email. Everyone hopes their papers can be pre-published in a journal and catch the attention of the review committee members.

So Lott Dugen was not surprised at all.

Nevertheless, what intrigued him was that this time Tian Yanzhen specially recommended a paper, and the author had just turned sixteen. Moreover, the content combined Schulz’s theory with curves, deriving the upper bound of rational points and providing a general formula, which was then verified through supercomputing.

This prompted Lott Dugen to decide to personally review the paper.

If the paper truly was as creative as Tian Yanzhen claimed, he wouldn’t mind assuming the role of the paper’s editor and finding suitable reviewers for it.

Not only because the content was highly innovative but also due to the age of the first author, Qiao Yu.

Mathematicians who have gained some status are generally more interested in young geniuses because they understand the importance of mathematical talent.

In natural sciences like physics and chemistry, when people get older, they can still rely on rich experience, guiding students through experiments, and finding highlights in complex data to continue making significant contributions, so their research lives are generally long.

But once mathematicians reach a certain age, they lose creativity. Mathematics, after all, is a discipline that requires creative thinking. One must not be constrained by the laws set by predecessors and maintain logical consistency within a perfect framework to propel the entire discipline forward.

In short, a novel idea in mathematics could potentially create a completely different world. But such novel ideas often belong to the young. Hence, the Fields Medal is awarded every four years and only to scholars under forty years old.

If a sixteen-year-old can independently complete such research, it would be incredibly imaginative.

So, Lott Dugen stopped browsing his personal emails and directly logged into the “Mathematical Yearbook” submission system’s backend. Through keyword search, he quickly found the paper recommended by Tian Yanzhen.

“Application of Schulz’s Complete Space Theory and P-Algebra Methods in Deriving Upper Bounds for Rational Points on Curves”

The formula presented directly in the introduction was enough to captivate him—so concise?!

Indeed, it was a very interesting paper, and Lott Dugen quickly immersed himself in it.

The earlier section on using Schulz’s complete spaces to analyze curves was something he read quickly, as it was not his area of expertise. Although this work appeared quite innovative as well, based on his understanding of pseudo-complete spaces, he didn’t believe this section was the most brilliant part of the paper.

Because the complexity of Schulz’s theory was so high, it was insufficient to support the author’s ability to derive the upper bound formula for rational points on curves to such a concise degree.

Soon, Lott Dugen reached the crucial part—the derivation of the geometric constraint invariant parameters.