On April 30, the first Chinese winner of the Fields Medal, the famous mathematician Academician Yau Chengtong, was invited to give a lecture entitled "The Current Situation and Future of Chinese Mathematics" to 400 teachers and students at Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
Its warning to Chinese scientific research is deafening, and the following is an excerpt:
1. China's mathematics has not yet reached the level of the United States in the 40s of the 20th century.
2. Today's situation in China ,......, unreasonably suppressed, and science and technology are stuck,...... Scholars are interested in comfort and do not think about danger, and most scholars only know how to seek personal interests from the government............
3. The real rise of mathematics in a country does not lie in the ability to follow the rules and follow the scholars of other countries to do some tinkering work, but in the direction of scientific research by itself...... The next three years will be a critical moment for China's rise, and if it does not reach the forefront of the world, I am afraid that the scholars introduced will gradually leave and lose their previous achievements...... If China does not have the means to provide such an academic environment, they may choose to leave.
4、…… There must be a fair judging system. However, until now, the Chinese mathematics community has not understood where our country's mathematical level is at the forefront of the world. Generally speaking, China does not seek the opinions of international experts when evaluating awards and promotions, and most of the opinions are decided by some domestic peers.
5. Most of the important scholars in Chinese mathematics are old and tend to stick to the old ways, and their understanding of the development of modern mathematics is not comprehensive, and their evaluation of some emerging disciplines is not accurate enough. In this context, young scholars will continue to stick to the old ways, have no ability or interest to follow their own path, and gradually derail from the development of the world's frontier.
6. Even in international evaluation, many schools make decisions based on the number of papers and the level of impact factor. This method is reliable for general learning, but it is far from enough for cutting-edge learning.
7. Chinese universities lack the most cutting-edge scientists and rarely seek the opinions of global experts. Even if the solicitation is mostly limited to Chinese scholars, it will not be comprehensive.
8. The whole review process is rigorously participated by the most authoritative experts in the world, and it is the most credible review process I have ever seen! I was amazed by the results of the judging! Of the eighty-five papers, only six are the work of domestic university professors, while there are more than seventy papers authored by American university professors! (Many papers have more than three authors)
9. Encourage universities and young people to establish clear goals,...... And the ambition of young people must be improved, and at least a small group of young students have the ambition to become world-class scholars, do breakthrough work, and be able to lead the way in the academic world and influence the development of mathematics in the coming decades!
10. We can't let our young people's lifelong ambition is to take the "hat" issued by the government, become an academician, or even win the Nobel Prize. The goal of learning is to find the mysteries of nature and find all meaningful laws!
Chengtong Yau is a member of the American Academy of Sciences, an academician of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a foreign academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a tenured professor in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Physics at Harvard University, a chair professor at Tsinghua University, the director of the Yau Center for Mathematical Sciences, the president of Qiuzhen College, and the president of the Yanqi Lake Institute of Applied Mathematics in Beijing. He has won the Fields Medal, MacArthur, Crafoord, Wolf, Marcel Grossmann, and Shaw.