The poetry of the trinologist
Liu Xuliang
Over the past week, I have been cross-reading Mr. Zhang Chuting's two monographs, "The Flow of Thought" and "Mathematics and Creation", and one idea is getting stronger and stronger, that is, the poetry of mathematicians. Mathematics is abstract and cold in the eyes of ordinary people, and correspondingly, mathematicians give the impression of seriousness and rigidity. In fact, in my limited mathematical horizon, I can list quite a few mathematicians with the quality of both arts and sciences. But I think the poetry and sincerity of the following 3 mathematicians can fully illustrate this point.
Poetic? Literally, the meaning is already very clear, that is, the artistic conception that gives people a sense of beauty as expressed in the poem, and it must also contain the poet's inner self-feeling, which must be a romance that transcends reality.
1. Su Buqing (September 23, 1902 – March 17, 2003)
Pingyang people of Wenzhou, Zhejiang, originally from Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a famous mathematician and educator in China, the founder of the Chinese school of differential geometry, known as "the splendid mathematical star in the oriental country", "the first geometrist in the east" and "the king of mathematics".
Professor Su is very good at writing popular science articles and is also a lover of literature and history. His writing is very powerful. He has a monograph "The Fusion of Numbers and Poetry" (Published by Hundred Flowers Literary and Art Publishing House, January 2000), and the appendix at the end of the book: Selected Poems of Su Buqing.
Seven Laws of Song Tao
Don't bend your waist for the five buckets, and return to give new words.
Hedge chrysanthemums have been three paths in the moon, and peach blossoms are like a stream of spring.
The writing is cheerful and elegant, and the history of chanting is as exciting as a god.
If Mr. Gao is prosperous, why should he be an idle man?
The jaw joint and neck joint are extremely neat. The jaw joint is very graphic. The epilogue implies that the author himself was born in a prosperous world, praising the times.
In 1997, Beijing Qunyan Publishing House published "Su Buqing's Amateur Poetry Notes", a total of 444 poems and 60 words, which were photocopied by Su Lao's handwriting, of which 191 works from 1931 to 1949 contained 47 words. From this, you can appreciate the refraction of Su Lao's academic career and poetry and book skills in the past 60 years, which is full of the atmosphere of the times and gives people a lot of enlightenment. Su Buqing not only reads poetry, but also has an interest in writing poetry, and has been working tirelessly for decades and writing nearly a thousand poems. He often feels it, and it is intentional, thought-provoking, and beneficial to read. It is now in the collection of wenzhou mathematical hall of fame.
2. Hua Luogeng (November 12, 1910 – June 12, 1985)
Born in Jintan District, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, his ancestral home is Danyang, Jiangsu, a mathematician, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a foreign academician of the National Academy of Sciences, a researcher and former director of the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a former vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. He is the founder and pioneer of Chinese analytic number theory and the father of modern Chinese mathematics.
In 1924, Hua Luogeng graduated from Jintan County Junior High School; in 1931, he was transferred to the Department of Mathematics of Tsinghua University; in 1936, he visited the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom; and in 1938, he was hired as a professor at Tsinghua University. Self-taught scientific giants and. Bateman, a famous American historian of mathematics, said: "Hua Luogeng is China's Einstein, enough to become an academician of all the famous academies of science in the world."
Mr. Hua's literary attainment is very high. He wrote many poems in his lifetime, and Hua Lao's poems were easy to understand and catchy. At that time, in the Southwest United Congress, the conditions were difficult, and Hua Luogeng and Wen Yiduo's two families were squeezed into the same room, separated by a curtain in the middle. There are poems to prove it:
Row of houses to accommodate knees, is it not just two families with ups and downs?
Budong archaeology Buxi calculation, professional different hearts and hatred!
Later, When Mr. Wen Yiduo was killed, when Mr. Hua was in Shanghai, he wrote sadly:
Dark clouds hang low and clear waves, and red candles shine at bulls.
Hearing bad news on the Ninghu Road, the devil's palm dared to kill more!
3. Chengtong Yau (1949- )
Originally from Jialing County, Guangdong Province, born in Shantou, Guangdong Province in 1949, he moved to Hong Kong with his parents in the same year, Chinese-American, internationally renowned mathematician, the first Chinese winner of the Fields Medal (1982). Yau Chengtong proved the Calabi conjecture, positive mass conjecture, etc., is the founder of the discipline of geometric analysis, named after him, the Calaby-Yau manifold, is the basic concept of string theory in physics, and has made important contributions to the development of differential geometry and mathematical physics.
The Calabi conjecture, derived from algebraic geometry, was proposed by the famous Italian geometrist Calabi at the 1954 International Congress of Mathematicians: in closed space, there may be a gravitational field without a distribution of matter. Calabi thinks it exists, but no one can confirm it, including Calaby himself. Twenty-one years later, in 1976, Yau Chengtong,a young mathematician who was newly married to Yan'er, indulged in the sweetness of the newlywed, suddenly burst into inspiration and passion, proving the Calabi conjecture.
Mr. Qiu likes Chinese classical literature, and when he was a teenager, he liked to read classical novels such as "Dream of the Red Chamber" and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and also liked to read historical books such as "History" and "Book of Han".
Acceptance speech: Falling flower people are independent, and micro swifts fly twice. (Source Song Lyrics "Linjiang Xian Dream Back Building High Lock")
Linjiangxian Dream Back Building High Lock
Yan Jidao (Song)
After the dream, the platform is locked high, and the curtain hangs low. Last spring when the hate came. The falling flower people are independent, and the micro swifts fly twice.
I remember the first sight of Xiao Ping, two heavy heart words Luo Yi. The lute strings say acacia. At that time, the bright moon was there, and the clouds had returned.
"The flower fallen man is independent, and the micro swift double flies." The battle is neat and tidy, full of a faint and humorous beautiful artistic conception, and at the same time reflects the loneliness that Mr. Qiu experienced in the process of verification that others cannot understand, but this loneliness is beautiful and intoxicating to him.
In the end, poetic edification can enhance people's infinite imagination and activate people's sleeping potential. "The introduction of new concepts and the emergence of new conclusions are generally not the result of logical thinking, but often the result of a 'whimsical', and the subsequent logical argument plays the role of 'health and health care'." (Mathematics and Creation, p. 40)
The evening of January 6, 2022