【Everyone】
Author: Zhang Yingbo (Professor, School of Mathematical Sciences, Beijing Normal University)
Biography of scholars
Wang Zikun, born in 1929, is a native of Ji'an, Jiangxi. Mathematician, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of the pioneers and major leaders of probability theory research in China. He graduated from the Department of Mathematics of Wuhan University in 1952 and the Department of Mathematical Mechanics of Moscow University in 1958 with an associate doctorate. He taught at Nankai University from 1952 to 1984 and was a professor at Beijing Normal University after 1984. He was the president of Beijing Normal University and the director of the Institute of Mathematics of Shantou University. He is the author of "The Basis of Probability Theory and Its Application", "Stochastic Process Theory", "The Process of Birth and Death and markov Chain", "Discussion of Scientific Discoveries" and so on.
In June 1948, 19-year-old Wang Zikun graduated from high school and returned to his hometown of Fengshu Village, Gujiang Town, Ji'an, Jiangxi, to worship the gods and ancestors and bid farewell to his mother. He is about to travel to Changsha University. I don't know when I will be able to say goodbye to my loved ones. In this case, Wang Zikun did go a long way, studying in Wuhan, studying in Moscow, teaching at Nankai University, becoming the president of Beijing Normal University, and being an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Hard Work: Probability Theory Chosen
When Wang Zikun was 11 years old, his father died of illness, and he and his mother, brother and sister-in-law's family barely survived by renting a few acres of thin land. Thanks to his classmate Lv Runlin's financial support for travel expenses, he had the opportunity to go to Changsha for examination.
When he arrived in Changsha, three months away from the time of university recruitment, Wang Zikun found a temporary teaching position at Luling Primary School run by Jiangxi people. The school had dormitories and canteens, and for the first time in his life, he was paid a salary and was finally able to support himself without having to borrow money everywhere.
Wang Zikun applied for five universities, all of which passed, and he chose the Department of Mathematics of Wuhan University with scholarships. In the autumn of that year, Wang Zikun was the first to report to the school carrying a mat and an old quilt. At that time, the student dormitory building of Wuhan University was located in the cherry blossom garden halfway up the mountainside, the building had four floors, divided into four door openings, a total of sixteen zhai, named after the first 16 characters in the "Thousand Character Text", "Heaven and Earth Xuanhuang Universe Flood Sun Moon Ying Ming Chen Chen Su Lie Zhang", Wang Zikun lived in the "Zeusai". Winter was coming quickly, and it was both damp and cold in the dormitory. Wang Zikun has a sweater, which is a relic of his father, and he relies on this sweater with a pair of wide peasant pants for the winter. It was too cold, he either went out for a run, or read a book on the bed, his hands and feet were often cold and cold, and he had frostbite. Until now, there was still a mark on his hand that had not disappeared.
With a life of eating, living and reading, Wang Zikun was very satisfied. A classmate introduced him to the library on Sunday to help, and the monthly payment was enough to buy a few bars of soap and solve the problem of washing clothes. With extra money, he saved up to buy toothbrush and toothpaste, and after a long time, he could also buy a towel.
In July 1950, Wang Zikun joined the Party and served as a member of the Party Branch of the Faculty of Science and the Secretary of the Youth League Branch of the Department of Mathematics. He was a conscientious and responsible man, and he would do his best to accomplish all the tasks entrusted to him by the organization. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the school set up bursaries to support students with family difficulties, and 25% of the students in the department could receive financial aid. At that time, there were many poor students, and the party branch of the Mathematics Department called on party members to suffer hardships and give up the number of bursaries as much as possible. Wang Zikun also expressed his intention to give up the bursary, but he shed tears. He had no financial resources and was the most difficult student in the class, and the students knew it. After repeated discussions, the party branch believed that Wang Zikun's situation should be treated specially, and his bursary was retained. Wang Zikun was always grateful for this.
In July 1952, Wang Zikun graduated from Wuhan University and was assigned to the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a graduate student. He went to Beijing with 30 students from Wuhan University to report that the train was speeding forward, and the spirited youth sang all the way, and the flames of youth simply roasted the carriages red, and the passengers in the same car could not help but sing together. When I arrived in Beijing, I learned that the distribution plan had changed, Wang Zikun was assigned to Nankai University as a teaching assistant, and other students were also reassigned.
After becoming a university teacher, Wang Zikun deeply felt that he did not know enough, and he often borrowed books from the library in his spare time. At that time, there was no clear goal, and what was caught was seen. The head of the department, Zeng Ding, saw that he was studious and self-motivated, and invited him to translate the textbook "Variational Division Course" co-authored by two Soviet academicians, Liuschernek and Raflintiev. Wang Zikun has never been exposed to the science of variational division, and he learns to translate while learning. Two years later, Zeng informed him that the book had been published by higher education presses and gave him 300 yuan in fees. In the 50s, 300 yuan was not a small amount. Wang Zikun returned to his hometown to visit his mother during the summer vacation and bought a ploughing cow for his family.
Since he began receiving his salary in August 1952, Wang Zikun has sent money to his family every month. After his mother's death, he still sent money to his brother and sister-in-law to express his gratitude to them. He was paid every month, and he always sent the money out within a day or two, month by month, without interruption, until the death of his brother and sister-in-law, nearly 50 years ago.
In 1954, the school recommended Wang Zikun to go to the Soviet Union for graduate school, and he first went to the Beijing Russian Specialized School on Shituma Avenue (now New Culture Street) in Beijing to study Russian. Learning Russian, Wang Zikun did not feel difficult, he faced the question: there are many branches of mathematics, which mathematics to learn in the Soviet Union? He consulted Guan Zhaozhi, a researcher at the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Mr. Guan suggested that he study probability theory, because the application of probability theory was very extensive, and there were very few people in China who were engaged in this direction at that time. Later, Wang Zikun listened to others say that probability theory is one of the branches of mathematics that the country urgently needs to develop and its strength is relatively weak, thus strengthening the determination to learn probability.
The direction is set, but what is probability theory? Wang Zikun didn't know anything, and even this concept was the first time he had heard of it. By chance, Wang Zikun, who loves to bubble bookstores, accidentally found a "Probability Theory Tutorial" in the bookstore, written by Gnetenchenko of the Soviet Union and translated by Ding Shoutian. If Wang Zikun got the most precious treasure, he quickly bought it back. According to the Russian special regulations, students are only allowed to read Russian, and it is strictly forbidden to read any business books. At that time, the urban area of Beijing was not large, and it was farmland to walk three or four miles northwest from Shituma Avenue. Every day after class, Wang Zikun runs to the field to study, and holidays are the golden time for him to study. He read very carefully, writing down his thoughts and questions in the book. This textbook became the starting point of Wang Zikun's academic career.
Soviet hard reading: never drum and piano for life
On August 28, 1955, Wang Zikun set off again. From Beijing's Qianmen Railway Station, it passes through vast Siberia and arrives in Moscow on September 8.
At that time, the Department of Mathematical Mechanics of Moscow University concentrated a number of world-renowned top mathematicians. Wang Zikun's mentor was Kolmogorov, who had established the axiom structure of probability theory, and the actual guide was Kolmogorov's graduate student Dobrushin. Dobrushin was in his early 30s at the time, smart and capable, and had a great job. During a meeting with Wang Zikun, Dobrushin asked him if he had studied probability theory. Wang Zikun did not hesitate to answer "studied", if not answered, it is likely that he would need to re-enroll in the Soviet Union or be sent back to China. Dobrushin asked which book he was using, and when he heard that it was Professor Gnetenchenko of Moscow University's "Tutorial on Probability Theory", he nodded in satisfaction. Wang Zikun frankly explained to him that he had not studied probability theory in a college class, and that the book had been self-taught for three months.
In China, Wang Zikun has always been an undisputed top student, and when he went to graduate school, he felt great pressure. His Soviet classmates had systematically studied probability theory in their third year of college, and even made some papers before coming to graduate school, and he had never undergone such comprehensive and in-depth academic training. With a low starting point, poor foundation, and russian not a native language, if you want to catch up, you must do what others have done in five years in three years. Wang Zikun himself has always believed that his talent is not medium, at most medium to high, there is no other way, can only work hard. When he was a student, he liked to play ball, play chess, play the huqin, and once went on stage to accompany people, but later gave up one by one, "never again drum and piano for life." Chinese students organize tours of the Volga every summer, and he has never been there.
Among the bibliographies prescribed by the tutor, the most difficult thing to nibble on is the tome "Stochastic Process" written by the American mathematician Dub. Previously, the book on stochastic processes was intuitive and the theoretical level was not high, and Dub for the first time based stochastic processes on the basis of measurement theory. Because it was groundbreaking work, it was difficult to articulate everything clearly; and because the author himself was of a high standard, many of the assertions he considered ordinary were brushstrokes, thus jumping too much, and even the Soviets thought it was a book of heaven. Wang Zikun began to read very slowly, and it was good to be able to read one page a day. After reading 50 pages, his ability continued to improve, and he also touched the temper of the author's writing, so he read faster and finally took it down. After reading it, he wrote two lines of handsome small characters on the title page of the book: "Sincerely annotated, the stone rots and the sea is dry." Wang Zikun, late 1956, Moscow University".
In the summer of 1957, Wang Zikun began writing his thesis, and Dobrushin asked him to consider the classification of the process of birth and death, and suggested a simple process to approximate. At first, his progress was very slow, and he did not even know the "meaning of the problem", "what to find", and "how to calculate it". Gradually on the road, the last two or three months progressed so quickly that even Dobrushhin was a little surprised. Because of the use of approximation, the question of how to understand and how to transition from infinity to finite bothered him for a long time, and he meditated, searching up and down, and the whole person was like a demon. One day, he suddenly got inspiration in his sleep, and he came up with it at once, and all the questions suddenly opened up.
Mathematical research can be divided into two categories: one is to discover very deep problems and discover deep connections between mathematical objects; the other is to make logical proofs step by step according to the requirements of strictness. The first type of work certainly requires hard thinking, but inspiration and intuition seem to work more. Just as an electron is in a state of stimulation and suddenly jumps to the outer layer of higher energy, people will be in a state of stimulation when they are thinking about a problem wholeheartedly, and suddenly raise their level by a certain level. Just as Lao Tzu called "the Tao is the Tao, the Extraordinary Tao", this situation is the "stroke of God" of scientific research.
Wang Zikun's thesis is titled "Classification of All Birth and Death Processes", in which he proposes a new method in Markov's process construction theory - the limit transition construction method of process orbit, which not only finds out the whole process of birth and death, but also is constructive, and the probability meaning is clear. The master of probability theory, Feller, had also considered this problem before, using analytical methods to find out some of the processes of birth and death. Wang Zikun's paper was cited and praised by probability theorists Duncan and Yuskevich, who said: "The Faller structure has come to multiple extensions of the process of birth and death, and Wang Zikun has found all the extensions." ”
Every second counts: life always has to fight a few times
After studying in the Soviet Union for three years and receiving an associate doctorate as scheduled, Wang Zikun set off for China in July 1958. On the train from Moscow to Beijing, Wang Zikun read the theory of queuing. Unexpectedly, at the end of this year, the Institute of Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences invited Polish mathematician Lukaszewicz to Beijing to lecture on queuing theory and mathematical statistics, and asked Wang Zikun to do the translation, and he just used the newly learned content. Wang Zikun read the lecture script before class, interpreted in class, and cooperated with experts tacitly. The course lasted for about half a year, during which Hua Luogeng also came to listen to the class. Once, Elder Hua entertained Lukasevich at a roast duck shop and asked Wang Zikun to accompany him.
In August of that year, Wang Zikun returned to Nankai and was assigned to the Department of Probability Theory. Despite the well-known name of Associate Doctor Liu Su in the 1950s and 1960s, Wang Zikun was always courteous and courteous to others, whether it was professors, lecturers, workers, administrators, or students in the class, he was very respectful.
Back in Nankai, Wang Zikun began to climb the peak of science in a race against time. Rong Guotuan has a famous saying that "life can have several beats", and Wang Zikun said that "life always has to fight several times". Soviet mathematicians and mathematicians left too deep an impression on him, and he hoped that he could become an accomplished mathematician and bring out a high-level probability theory research team in Nankai.
In 1979, Wang Zikun gave a lecture at Nankai University. Profile picture
Wang Zikun sorted out his graduate dissertation in Chinese and wrote a nearly 50-page long article under the title of "The Theory of the Construction of the Process of Birth and Death", which was published in "Advances in Mathematics" in 1962. Subsequently, on the basis of the construction theory of the process of birth and death, he used the differential and recursive methods to find out the functional distribution of the process of birth and death, and gave the application of this distribution in the fields of queuing theory and infectious diseases. Driven by Wang Zikun, the study of constructivism has become one of the important features of Markov process research in China.
In 1962, he published another interdisciplinary long article "Introduction to Stochastic Functional Analysis" in Advances in Mathematics, which was the first paper in China to introduce, discuss and study stochastic functional analysis more systematically. In the paper, Wang Zikun solved the limit theorem of random elements in the generalized function space, which led to the follow-up work of many scholars in China. He also studied the generalities of Markov's processes, such as the law of zero one, constant return, the relationship between Martin's boundaries and excessive functions. All of this work was published in the Acta Mathematica Sinica.
Nankai University began to implement a five-year academic system in 1956, and students of the 56th grade entered different disciplines after the end of the third year, called specialization. Wang Zikun taught "Stochastic Process" in 1960, and there were students of probability specialization at the level of 56 and 57, as well as teachers from our own school and other schools. At that time, Yang Xiangqun, who was in the fifth grade, and Wu Rong and Zhao Zhaoyan, who were in the fourth grade, also went to listen. Someone reminded Wang Zikun to organize the lecture into a book, so he wrote while speaking. Before Wang Zikun writes each chapter, he must think of a clear goal, and all reasoning and argumentation revolve around the final theorem of the lord, which is very clear. The lecture notes also introduced his own research results, ideas and experiences, which were cordial and easy to understand. He used this lecture note to lecture for three consecutive students, and later the Science Press accepted the book, and in December 1965, the first edition of "Stochastic Process Theory" was published, and in 1978, it was printed for the second time, a total of 40,000 copies, and many universities and scientific research units used this book as a textbook or reference book. A science and technology book printed 40,000 copies, which was rare at that time.
After the start of the fire, Wang Zikun once again wrote "The Basis of Probability Theory and Its Application" and "The Process of Birth and Destruction and the Markov Chain", but unfortunately, the "Cultural Revolution" was approaching, and it was too late to publish. It was not until 1976 that The Foundations of Probability Theory and Its Applications were printed for the first time, and nearly 100,000 copies were printed for the third time in 1985. The Process of Birth and Death and the Markov Chain is a monograph that has also been printed in more than 10,000 copies. After the reform and opening up, these three books have become a trilogy of probability theory for college students and graduate students in China: "The Foundations of Probability Theory and Its Application", "Stochastic Process Theory" specialization, and "Life and Death Process and Markov Chain" have just entered the field of scientific research. To this day, these three books are still classics.
In October 1960, the Department of Mathematics held a lecture in a small auditorium with a capacity of 300 people. At the meeting, Hu Guoding, who also went to study in the Soviet Union, told his deeds of underground struggle before the founding of New China, and Wang Zikun gave a lecture on "On the Method of Self-Study in Mathematics." The auditorium was full, not only students from the department, but also students from other departments who heard the news, and the aisle was full of people, and the door was crowded. Wang Zikun told the students that to read books, we must first make up our minds, and quoted the famous sentence in the Song Dynasty literary scholar Yan Yu's "Canglang Poetry" that "the entry needs to be correct, and the determination needs to be high", and used Li Bai's poem "Dapeng rises with the same wind in one day, and shakes up to ninety thousand miles" to motivate them. After making up his mind, he must put it into action, and he borrowed the Song Dynasty poet Liu Yong's "The belt gradually widens and there is no regret, and the people are haggard for The Ishwa". Half a century later, his students Yang Xiangqun and Wu Rong talked about the sensational speech, and blurted out a sentence that was "the belt is gradually widened and there is no regret."
Wang Zikun seized the precious six and a half years from 1959 to the first half of 1965 and engaged in academic work every second. He has completed 13 academic papers, written two textbooks for specialized courses and a monograph, a translation, one or two undergraduate courses a year, and chaired one or two seminars of considerable size.
When Wang Zikun first returned to China, the school's real estate department arranged for him to be in Room 106, No. 2, North Village, Nankai's faculty dormitory. The room is only 9 square meters, there are two large windows on the north side, against the boiler room of the north village, you can't see the sun, you have to turn on the lights during the day, but the wind is also blocked, and the house is very warm. The furniture was only a single bed, a chair. The staff who sent him was very embarrassed and said that he would adjust it to you later. Wang Zikun did not care, he could say anything about the house, he lived here for 19 years.
Every household in the building cooked on the stove, and Wang Zikun felt that cooking was a waste of time, so he went to eat in the canteen every day. People who go to the canteen to eat generally like to queue up early and can buy delicious meals. But Wang Zikun was reluctant to waste even this little time, he always went to the canteen last, what to eat. In those years, neighbors often saw Wang Zikun riding a rusty broken bicycle with two old hot water bottles with bamboo grate shells hanging from the car to open the water in the water room. The neighbor joked with him: "Your car does not need to be evaluated, it must be the first broken car in Nankai." Wang Zikun also responded with a smile: "This broken car has one of the biggest advantages, do you know?" No one dares to steal! ”
At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the Beicun dormitory stopped heating and the boiler room was demolished. So the two large windows of Wang Zikun's room faced a desolate reed pond. The windows are embedded with single-layer glass, and in winter the north wind is raging, and the room is extremely cold. The face towel froze into hard pieces; the water in the teacup froze into ice cubes; and in the morning, it was frosted on the head. Wang Zikun's fingers and the back of his hands were covered with frostbite. It was in this room, sitting at the small desk in spring, summer and autumn, and sitting on the bed draped in a quilt in the winter, and he wrote the later popular science bestseller "Scientific Discovery" day and night.
Since the 4th issue of the Nankai Journal in 1977, it has serialized "Discussion on Scientific Discoveries". This was the first batch of popular science articles that rushed out of the siege after the "Cultural Revolution", which brought people a fresh wind and everyone rushed to read. The "Nankai Journal" was expensive for a while, and the number of orders soared from 10,000 to 50,000. The Shanghai Science and Technology Publishing House edited and published all the articles in early 1978. This small book of more than 70,000 words and more than 100 pages involves one or two hundred Chinese and foreign scientists and more than 100 ancient and modern scientific discoveries, but it is not a biography of scientists, nor is it a documentary of scientific discoveries, but through the successes and failures of many scientists in the process of innovation, "talking about" the general laws of ancient and modern Chinese and foreign scientific discoveries, and "horizontal theory" the qualities that successful people should have - morality, knowledge, talent, and learning. After the publication of this book, thousands of letters from readers flew like snowflakes, including middle school students, college students, university teachers, scientific and technological personnel, and even the historian Mr. Gu Jiegang.
In October 1977, Wang Zikun returned to Tianjin from Beijing, and as soon as he walked into the dormitory to drop off his luggage, his friend came over and told him: "You are going to be promoted to professor!" "This is the first time since 1963 that a title evaluation has been conducted. In November, the Tianjin Municipal Government led the national trend and held a 10,000-person conference at the Tianjin Gymnasium, announcing that Wang Zikun of Nankai University and He Jiali of Tianjin University were rated as professors.
Wang Zikun's reputation is growing. He was kind-hearted and almost responsive. After being transferred from Nankai, Wang Zikun handed over his house back to the school. His student Chen Dianfa was sorting out his books and letters when he saw a letter written in pencil, the font was clumsy, a primary school student wanted Grandpa Wang to help him formulate a study plan, and Wang Zikun also replied with suggestions.
Principal of Normal University: Do your best and do things impartially
After the death of historian Chen Yuan in 1971, the position of president of Beijing Normal University remained vacant. Thirteen years later, in 1984, Wang Zikun was appointed president of Beijing Normal University.
After teaching in Nankai for 32 years and saying goodbye, Wang Zikun will go to Beijing Normal University to become the president. A scholar, facing a well-known university with a long history, knows nothing about the situation and is at a loss in front of his eyes. However, thinking that the president's term of office is limited after all, and thinking that his wife Tan Deling has been working at Beijing Normal University, and the two have been separated for a long time, Wang Zikun finally made up his mind that as long as he "did his best and did things impartially", he believed that he would get the support and understanding of teachers and students. With these eight-character principles, Wang Zikun embarked on the leadership position he was most unfamiliar with.
In the presidency of the principal, Wang Zikun fulfilled his duties as diligently as ever. He divided the day into four units: early morning, morning, afternoon, and evening. Morning and afternoon are working hours, and he is fully engaged in all aspects of school affairs; morning and evening are his reading time, whether it is weekdays or holidays.
At that time, the main building of Shida Was an 8-story matchbox-shaped building, and Wang Zikun's office was in the southeast corner of the 3rd floor. When the cleaners were cleaning, they always saw a small pile of watermelon seed skins in the principal's wastepaper basket. After a long time, they learned that the principal read in the office every night, and when he was hungry, he would sniff melon seeds while reading. Long before they arrived, just after 5 a.m., the principal was already reading at his desk. I went home for breakfast at 7:30 and went to work in the office at 8:00. They couldn't understand, principal Wang, who was emaciated and weak in appearance, where did he get such physical strength and energy?
Wang Zikun has great respect for the old gentleman of the school. At that time, the school had two members of the Faculty of The Chinese Academy of Sciences (renamed academicians after 1993), biologist Wang Kunren and geographer Zhou Tingru, as well as Zhong Jingwen, Qi Gong, Tao Dayong, Bai Shouyi and many other well-known scholars in the liberal arts. Wang Zikun often visited the house to listen to their opinions on the construction of the school. At the suggestion of Wang Zikun and the discussion and approval of the president's office meeting, the school decided to equip these old professors with assistants. The assistants are almost all equipped, and when he arrives at Mr. Qi, who has always been low-key, he said that he did not need an assistant, and that young people needed to study hard after the "Cultural Revolution". At that time, Mr. Qi had the most social activities, and he had no choice but to let Hou Gang, director of the principal's office, take care of Mr. Qi's affairs first. This pipe was managed for 20 years until Mr. Kai passed away.
Wang Zikun treated the teachers and staff of the University with his usual humble attitude. When he first became the principal, he was not very familiar with the teachers of the Mathematics Department of Normal University, but he was bound to attend the Spring Festival Tea Party of the Mathematics Department every year. Every year during the Spring Festival, Wang Zikun will go to the boiler room, the driver class, and the canteen of students and teachers to offer condolences. Years later, the teachers and staff of the normal university still used to refer to Wang Zikun as "our old principal". The old principal was riding a worn-out bicycle on campus, and when he met someone greeting him, he got out of the car and returned the salute. This classic shot is still fresh in the memories of the old teachers.
After stepping down as principal in the late 1980s, Wang Zikun returned to his beloved study. In 1991, he was elected as a member of the Faculty of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and became another academician in this direction after Mr. Xu Baolu, the founder of probability and statistics in China.
Returning from the South to the North: The heart is related to learning, the heart is related to education
In early 1993, Wang Zikun bought a copy of the Digest newspaper at a newsstand and read an advertisement for Shantou University recruiting teachers. He was a little moved, thinking that it was not bad to go out for a while, so he tentatively wrote a letter. After seeing the letter, the president of Shantou University rushed to Beijing with the head of the Mathematics Department and warmly and solemnly invited him.
In March of that year, Wang Zikun went to Shantou University to teach. He still adhered to the ancient precept of "being entrusted by others and being loyal to others", and worked in Shantou for ten months every year, only returning to Beijing during winter and summer vacations. His student Zhang Xinsheng followed him to shantou university. When Zhang Xinsheng first arrived, he had not yet received the dormitory key and was ready to go to the hotel. Wang Zikun said no, so he stayed with me. Zhang Xinsheng would cook a few dishes and wanted to make something good for the teacher, but Wang Zikun would not let him, saying that "it is enough to eat good once a week." Wang Zikun likes to eat hollow cabbage stir-fried peppers, and they often make this dish together.
Wang Zikun is quiet on the outside, but ambitious on the inside. The first thing he did in Shantou was to prepare for the establishment of a mathematical research institute. At that time, Wang Zikun believed that with Li Ka-shing's funding and the good conditions of Shantou University's school building, he could invite first-class mathematicians to do research, and their graduate students could also work here. Wang Zikun wrote a report very seriously, and with the support of the school leaders, he successively invited Lu Qiheng and Ding Xiaqi, academicians of the Institute of Mathematics and the Institute of Computing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In 1994, the Institute of Mathematics of Shantou University held a conference with unprecedented grand event. In addition to the academicians who have already worked here, famous artists such as Wu Wenjun and Jiang Boju have also come.
Wang Zikun still soaks in the library as always, engaging in scientific research and writing articles day and night. In addition to paying attention to new developments in the field of mathematics, he is also interested in reading articles on physics and biology. In 1994, at the invitation of the Department of Mathematical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he wrote "Mathematics Today and Its Applications", expounding from a lofty height the relationship between mathematics and national prosperity, the role of mathematics in the military, astronomy, petroleum, manufacturing, life sciences, macroscopic and microeconomy, detailing the contributions of Chinese mathematicians in the field of applied mathematics, and calling for the struggle for a mathematical power. The article has had a wide impact on the mathematical community and the scientific and technological community.
In 1999, Wang Zikun left Shantou and returned to Beijing Normal University to teach. He continued to preside over the seminar and still took the lead for an hour. In the 21st century, his students Li Zenghu, Hong Wenming, and Zhang Mei began to train master's and doctoral students, and their students were all members of Wang Zikun's seminar. The seminar also evolved from the cutting-edge literature of the report to the systematic and selective reading of monographs. After the age of 80, Wang Zikun can still ask some mathematical problems in the seminar class. He often went to the library alone to consult the materials, carefully prepared for a long time, and made interesting reports for the students, such as the history of mathematics, the mathematical theory of Brownian motion, and so on. A few years ago, Wang Zikun, who was nearly ninety years old, could no longer make a complete report in the discussion class, but every Tuesday afternoon, he would come to the discussion class classroom on time, sit in the middle of the first row, open the books, and listen attentively to the students' student reports on their reading experience. He has been unable to get to the forefront of science, but sometimes he still interjects a sentence or two to point out some shortcomings in formula writing or other aspects. Teachers and students of Beijing Normal University can still see the old principal riding a low Type 24 bicycle, slowly traveling on the campus path. Sometimes, his wife Tan De looked at him on crutches, and when a student saw it, she ran over to inquire, and she always shook her hand and said, "It's okay, it's okay, he went to the bookstore again." ”
It was not until January last year that 91-year-old Wang Zikun and his wife left Beijing Normal University and lived in a pension community on the outskirts of Beijing.
Guangming Daily (October 25, 2021, 16th edition)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily