The content of this email is different from all other emails.

The sender of this email was also a stranger whom Chen Zhou had never met.

However, in the field of number theory, both Chen Zhou and the stranger were known as young talented mathematicians.

However, unlike Chen Zhou, he has solved difficult number theory problems one after another in the past two years.

This stranger seemed a little quiet.

Of course, the silence here refers to academic achievements.

Rather than a comparison of the mathematics awards won by the two.

Because, this stranger has won the Sastra Ramanujan Medal, the Whitehead Prize of the London Mathematical Society, the European Mathematical Society Award, etc. in the past two years.

This is much more powerful than Chen Zhou's ability to win awards.

Although Chen Zhou at this time is also worthy of awards such as the Ramanujan Award.

However, no notification was sent to Chen Zhou, and no one told him that he had won the award, so it was naturally impossible for Chen Zhou to ask for one himself.

Chen Zhou frowned slightly and read the email again.

Chen Zhou suddenly remembered something. It seemed that this person was the most popular candidate for this year's Cole Prize in Number Theory.

Unfortunately, it has now been confirmed by multiple sources.

The Cole Prize in Number Theory must have been snatched away by myself.

This talented mathematician in the field of number theory did not continue his path of winning awards.

If you want to win the Cole Prize in Number Theory, you probably have to wait until the next session.

"James Maynard..."

Chen Zhou whispered the name, thinking about how to reply to this email from a competitor.

This was the name of the unknown sender, a young British mathematician.

Speaking of James Maynard, he may not be as amazing as Terence Tao.

However, he obtained a master's degree from Cambridge University at the age of 22 and a doctorate from Oxford University at the age of 26.

At the age of 26, he reduced the upper limit of the prime number interval in the twin prime conjecture from 70 million to 600.

It greatly optimized Zhang Yitang's previous proof results.

Also based on James Maynard's method, a team narrowed the prime number interval to 246.

Moreover, according to this method, the prime number interval can be even smaller.

It can be said that James Maynard's method brought about a milestone breakthrough.

To the extent that James Maynard was praised by Terence Tao himself: "To be honest, his way of description is actually cleaner than mine...Facts have also proved that his method is slightly better..."

As for why Terence Tao made such praise, it was because at about the same time, Terence Tao on the other side of the ocean also came to basically the same conclusion on the same issue.

According to media reports, James Maynard had just graduated with a Ph.D. at that time and was just a postdoctoral fellow with little fame.

Given Tao's status and fame at the time, he could have published this research together with James Maynard.

However, out of respect for talent, Terence Tao gave up this opportunity.

He was afraid that his own fame would overshadow the young mathematician's achievements.

These words were said by Terence Tao during an interview.

And it turns out that James Maynard does have unlimited potential.

In the years after he received his doctorate, he rose to prominence for his advances in number theory.

He has also won many mathematics awards and is one of the hot candidates for this year's Cole Prize in Number Theory.

Of course, what James Maynard relied on was definitely not a further proof of the twin prime conjecture.
After all, after Chen Zhou solved the Djebov conjecture, the twin prime conjecture had been completely solved by Terence Tao and Zhang Yitang.

In the face of this final result, any progress in the process is insignificant.

James Maynard relied on the Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture, a difficult problem that has puzzled mathematicians for nearly 80 years.

Why say once?

Because James Maynard has successfully solved the Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture.

The Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture is an important conjecture in metric Diophantine approximation, proposed by physicist Richard Duffin and mathematician Albert Schaeffer in 1941.

Diophantine approximation is a branch of number theory that studies the approximation of real numbers with rational numbers.

Simply put, most real numbers are irrational numbers such as π and √2.

They cannot be expressed as fractions.

So, Richard Duffin and Albert Schaeffer put forward a conjecture.

Assume f:n→r≥0 is a real-valued function with positive values, the series q=1→∞∑f(q)φ(q)/q=∞ is divergent only if.

That is, when q＞0, φ(q) is the Euler function, which represents the number of positive integers that are smaller than q and coprime with q.

For an irrational number α, there exist infinite rational numbers that satisfy the inequality |α-(p/q)|<f(q)/q.

That is to say, when looking for an approximate value, do not consider the numerator first, but instead select an infinite number of numbers from natural numbers as the denominator.

The numerator is then selected based on the denominator sequence and the specified approximation accuracy range.

The result is that if the infinite series diverges, it means that all irrational numbers have been approximated.

Otherwise, no approximation to any irrational number is achieved.

This conjecture is generally considered by mathematicians to be the standard of correctness in rational approximation.

But how to prove it has been a difficult problem that has troubled mathematicians for nearly 80 years.

It wasn't until James Maynard and his collaborators proved the conjecture in a 44-page paper.

As a result, James Maynard received praise from many mathematicians.

This naturally includes Terence Tao, who gave up signing his paper because he valued the talent of the talent.

In fact, although the Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture seems simple, it actually touches on the profound properties of the natural number system and is a landmark open problem in number theory.

This is also the biggest reason why James Maynard is the hot candidate for this year's Cole Prize in Number Theory.

But unfortunately, he met the monster Chen Zhou.

In one year, three world-class mathematical conjectures were solved in succession.

It just so happens that this also includes one of the two most important conjectures in the prime number spacing problem, the Jebov conjecture.

Not only that, the mathematical tool Chen Zhou used to solve the Gerbov conjecture is the distribution deconstruction method.

It also played a crucial role in helping Terence Tao and Yitang Zhang solve the twin prime conjecture.

There is nothing we can do about it.

If we talk about one of them alone, maybe James Maynard can be compared.

But overall, James Maynard can't compare.

Therefore, this competitor, whom he had never met before, sent an email to Chen Zhou, praising Chen Zhou's work in the field of number theory and the achievements he had made.

In addition, James Maynard also stated that he was also studying the distributed deconstruction method used by Chen Zhou.

In addition, James Maynard believes that although the two are direct competitors for the Cole Number Theory Prize.

But no matter who wins the award, the other party should be a worthy opponent.

To explain, the real timeline has been adjusted here to bring forward the research results of James Maynard. Please don't be too serious.

(End of this chapter)