Cai Tianxin's characters experience

Some people say that being a mathematician and a poet may be the two most difficult things in the world. Cai Tianxin is actually both a mathematician and a poet. What is even more surprising is that Cai Tianxin is also a traveler. He has been to more than 65,438+000 countries and regions, many of which were invited by poetry festivals and literary festivals in various countries, and held his personal reading sessions in new york, Paris, Cambridge, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, Nairobi, Kilimanjaro, Bie Vicencio and other cities. He believes that a successful poetry activity needs to leave a good impression on everyone who comes to the scene for the first time. Since 2008, he has held many photo exhibitions in Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Taizhou and Jinhua. Among them, the "highest pleasure" of Hangzhou's cross-year traveling photography exhibition is divided into Liangzhu Cultural Village (sorry, actually Liangzhu Cultural Village belongs to Yuhang, not Hangzhou in the full sense), Baoshishan, Zijin Port, Xiaoheshan and Xiasha, with an audience of 80,000 people.

In recent years, Cai Tianxin is also committed to the promotion and popularization of mathematical culture, and has been invited to Beijing, Shanghai, Xi 'an, Nanjing, Hangzhou, Jinan, Shijiazhuang, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as Suzhou, Yan 'an, Jiaxing, Taizhou, Lishui, Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Xiamen, Hefei, Ningbo, Wenzhou, Huzhou, Shaoxing, Jinhua and Quzhou.

Walker Cai Tianxin

In 2003, when the mathematician Cai Tianxin was 40 years old, he reviewed several figures closely related to the first half of his life: 15 years old went to college, got a doctorate at 24 years old, became a professor at 3 1 years old, and became a son of the East at 33 years old. He traveled to more than 60 countries and wrote 250 exotic poems.

Unconsciously, he has two more identities, a poet and a traveler. Does a person deviate from his major or join in?

At the beginning of the year, he collected and published a collection of travel essays, Numbers and Roses, which was quiet and full of wisdom. At the beginning of Traveler, Cai Tianxin mentioned a story of his childhood: in the classroom of a rural primary school in Zhejiang, the pupil who had never been far away drew a road map of Nixon's first visit to China (unfortunately, this precious hand-drawn map was lost in a moving process); Another thing he mentioned was that he first saw the train on his way to college. The biggest city he has been to before is Wenzhou. "All his experiences seem to be premeditated." Tobias Bugat, a German poet who translated Cai Tianxin's poems, wrote in an envious commentary, "They interacted and colluded with each other: my father's bookshelf, an atlas drawn from childhood, Apollinaire magazine, mathematical visits and conferences, and of course poetry and travel." He even traced the name "Cai Tianxin" back to Chinese-a poem from Du Fu's "Two Ways".

Maybe Bugat is right. A name is more than just a symbol.

August 13, Hangzhou. In the afternoon of the interview, pop music sung in the street was played again and again in the cafe. It was misty and rainy outside the window, and Cai Tianxin was not excited. The reason he said was that he didn't take a nap at noon. In the evening, when warm Latin music resounded through the air-raid shelter-like bar, he looked around and wanted to leave the reporter for a dance several times.

Cai Tianxin's understanding of music and dance is self-taught. And painting. He is currently the painting teacher of his twin daughter, who is seven years old.

Maybe he should be associated with an art category like poetry. Maybe he should have concentrated his limited energy in one direction and made great achievements-but why did he choose mathematics in the first place?

This touched the sensitive area of Cai Tianxin. He has been reluctant to talk about his childhood experiences. The father who named him graduated from the history department of Peking University and loved literature, but his fate was not good. After the anti-rightist movement, middle school principals became very pragmatic (proficient in cooking, grazing and carpentry). Father decided Cai Tianxin's way of mathematics without consultation.

"When I recalled the distant past/listened to fantasy advice with interest/a pair of swollen hands with frostbite/appeared behind a white curtain/the face of a long-lost relative", Cai Tianxin wrote a poem mourning his father, and the complicated emotions were obvious. Because nothing can be re-assumed.

What he witnessed later was that his mother was beaten as a "counter-revolutionary" and his elder brother, 10/0, cut in line in the northeast ... All this did not happen to Cai Tianxin, but it made his limbs and brain react strangely-what was it? Cai Tianxin didn't say. I think his so-called dreams, maps, trains and flights are all possibilities for lonely teenagers to try to reach the outside world.

Cai Tianxin has been to more than 60 countries and met more than 500 people of different races since he started writing poems as a graduate student. He also thinks that he has the necessary confidence, serenity and tolerance, and even has the charm of a 40-year-old man.

The spiritual fortress of multiple identities

Many years later, Cai Tianxin thanked his father for his choice, because "Mathematics is a solid fortress"-on him, this sentence has been appreciated in the spiritual world and returned to his heart. He refused to confuse with a drifter and stuck to his hometown-Hangzhou.

"There are many times I want to escape from this city. Because the market has a strong taste. " Actually, Hangzhou is not the most popular city in China, is it? His so-called escape is a trip, he is not a wanderer, and he will come back contentedly within a year at most.

/kloc-There are only two summers in 0/0 year. One is that his twin daughters were born in the summer of 1996, and the other is that he is 40 years old this summer. He is meticulous and gentle to his family and children (they have followed him to more than a dozen countries).

"Although Cai Tianxin has a good means of living abroad, it is undoubtedly meaningful to return to the motherland and the mother tongue world after each roaming." Thirdly, I want to mention Bugat's comments. I have to say that Cai Tianxin said something to many domestic media but told many foreign friends. During Cai Tianxin's journey, these friends may receive a letter or a beautiful gift from a corner of the world at any time.

And he is still attached to his hometown. "People who can't enjoy ordinary life can't appreciate the passion of travel and poetry." Just as he expressed his views on his identity as a mathematician in technical terms from beginning to end: although the space is constantly shifting, it will eventually return to its original starting point like a gear line. For him, first, math visits and conferences led to travel, then travel inspired writing, and now poetry and literary activities continue to provide new travel. The two are in a virtuous circle, and it is difficult to give up one of them.

Cai Tianxin seldom mentioned travel or poetry to the graduate students he brought with him. The students only know that this is a "teacher who pays more attention to inspiration and guidance" and asks others to be inspired like themselves. He is an unconventional teacher. Hundreds of students were surprised by the teacher's books and began to call him "Cai Cai", "Cai Xiao" and "Mathematical Genius". After all, he brought great vitality to the boring mathematics department. He also gave boarding passes, tickets and coins with smaller denominations as gifts to students or listeners at the right time (the picture is reluctant).

The trouble encountered by "requirements"

Cai Tianxin is a demanding person, but he is not demanding. Because with the growth of rings and rich experience, he has gradually become gentle and generous.

He wants everything to be beautiful and stylish-trees, houses, birds, rivers. And I saw with my own eyes in the bar that the two girls invited by Cai Tianxin and his friends were all beautiful women. In the poem Numbers and Roses, I noticed that he used "those crimson, orange or white flowers" when writing roses. When I first met Cai Tianxin, he wore a yellow-green plaid shirt, waved at the rain-soaked white zebra crossing and held an old purple folding umbrella in his hand. His clothes can be regardless of the brand, but they must have color and shape.

He demands health. His body and appetite ensured a smooth journey. Some people say that his teenage gray hair turned black because he wrote poems-in fact, it turned black because of travel. He likes all antagonistic games and has always been the main force of the faculty sports team. He also asked for speed. In the first half of his life, he was completing something at an unpredictable speed that might take a person a lifetime to complete. "A person's energy is limited." Cai Tianxin will also say. When he heard all the warm music, he couldn't help feeling: "At this time, I feel that my life has stopped declining."

Who can resist the decline of life?

Cai Tianxin's mobile phone will always be his closest companion, whether in the interview process or in the bar. He always looks at the time on the display.

He didn't wear a watch, and he had nothing but glasses. Even leather shoes and belts are very light ones bought abroad. He doesn't like weight or burden. In the city, he takes a taxi instead of walking (although he has developed first-class driving skills in the United States), and from one country to another, he relies on airplanes. At this age, time is pressing. Only lose weight and speed up.

Cai Tianxin is always calm and gentle, and he will only worry when he reaches the speed. "If you give me another chance to choose, it may be completely different when I finish my master's degree (2 1 year)." Later, he often mentioned "that was when I was young".

The speed he asked for met with irresistible trouble.

"40 years old is a watershed. Before that, I was obsessed with traveling. After that, I will concentrate more on writing. "

He still set a goal for next summer: the east coast of the Mediterranean. It is a deliberate foreshadowing-this is usually an achievable prophecy. He said.

Looking for the Poetry of Mathematics

"We live in this world, like a string of bullets, through the wall of night."

-Cai Tianxin This poem was printed in the window of a French bookstore and on postcards issued in Israel.

In Cai Tianxin's mind, this collision between thinking and mind seems to be like a favorite sentence of the mathematical prince Gauss: "Numbers are the product of our hearts."

The interview with Cai Tianxin, a professor at Zhejiang University, benefited from a suitable opportunity-his 20 12 mathematical trilogy Numbers and Roses, Mathematics and Human Civilization, and Number Theory from the Perspective of Yu Cong have just come out, and his research on number theory has made a breakthrough in the past two years, and his collection of essays, Distant People-Stars Shining in the Mathematical Sky, is about to come out.

Cai Tianxin joked: "If one of these three things is missing, I may decline this interview."

Imagination in the dark

15 years old, admitted to Shandong University. At the age of 24, he got a doctorate. 3 1 year-old, promoted to professor. At the age of 33, he became the "son of the East" of CCTV. Two months before he turned 50, he was widely known for his enviable titles, such as "mathematician, poet, writer, traveler and photographer". Ordinary people are always amazed at Cai Tianxin's extensive dabbling and vigorous energy, but he still tries to do every job better.

"We live in this world, like a string of bullets, through the wall of night." Cai Tianxin's poems were printed in the window of a French bookstore and on postcards issued in Israel.

For more than ten years, Cai Tianxin has become more and more famous in the international poetry circle. His works have been translated into more than 20 languages, and his poetry and prose collections have been published in English, French, Spanish, Korean, Slavic and Turkish. He has been invited to participate in national poetry festivals and literary festivals for more than 30 times, and held personal poetry recitals in new york, Paris, Cambridge, Frankfurt, Nairobi and other cities.

Cai Tianxin realized his dream of visiting the100th country in 20 12 years through international conference invitations, academic visits and literary activities. Different from ordinary people's travel, he always takes some kind of mission and thinking on his journey.

On the way, Cai Tianxin always carries an idiot camera. In the personal photography exhibitions held in Shenzhen and Hangzhou, there was a work taken in the Paris subway station: a beggar sat wearily under the circular advertisement in the hands of a beautiful woman. In Cai Tianxin's eyes, there is a unique mathematical explanation: the beggar's curled body and ring form two perfect ellipses.

After the age of 40, Cai Tianxin not only studied number theory and wrote poems as always, but also turned his attention to other fields of literature, such as travel notes and prose creation. 20 10 published a childhood memoir "Little Memories" and a collection of humanistic essays "On the Cliff of the Ear". 20 1 10 also published a travel trilogy "Flying", a cultural map of Europe and Britain, and a country without tigers.

"Literature, like mathematics, is the product of curiosity and imagination." Cai Tianxin said that literary creation and travel are very open, and all roads lead to the same goal. "They improved my mathematical vision and imagination." In 20 12 years, his mathematical trilogy came out one after another.

"The most classic and modern"

In Cai Tianxin's mind, this collision between thinking and mind seems to be like a favorite sentence of the mathematical prince Gauss: "Numbers are the product of our hearts."

But Cai Tianxin seems to be tireless. Discuss the great figures in the history of mathematics from 1990. 19 years later, his unreachable human beings-stars shining in the mathematical sky was published. By studying the history of mathematics and graphics, Cai Tianxin "can be closer to the classic masters", which also directly affects his new book Number Theory-from the perspective of congruence.

In this interview with China Science News, Cai Tianxin specially sent an introduction published in Mathematical Culture, introducing the new problems and methods involved in his book Number Theory, as well as his thinking and expansion of some classic number theory problems. After these problems and conclusions were published, they attracted the attention of colleagues in the field of number theory. Famous scholars including Allen Baker, a member of the Royal Society and winner of the Fields Medal, praised them as "real original contributions".

Cai Tianxin told reporters that his idea is actually quite simple, that is, combining addition and multiplication, which is as important as physicists discussing the relationship between protons and neutrons in the nucleus. In the past, number theory was divided into addition number theory and multiplication number theory. For example, Hua's masterpiece The Theory of Iterated Prime Numbers belongs to the theory of additive numbers. Using this idea, he and his graduate students transformed or expanded the classical Waring problem and Fermat's last theorem. The former is equally profound but the result is better, and the latter cannot be deduced even under the strong abc conjecture.

Perfect number is the oldest mathematical problem, and mathematicians such as Descartes, Fermat and Euler have tried to find its extension, but all of them have only sporadic results. Cai Tianxin defined the perfect number of the sum of squares and corresponded it with the ancient Fibonacci twin prime numbers one by one, thus creating infinity again. The latter can find 5 pairs (pieces) with the most modern computer. The smallest two are 10 and 65, and the largest two are astronomical figures.

"Goldbach's conjecture is not perfect enough." Cai Tianxin claimed that he was inspired by this conjecture and defined the number of prime numbers, and there were as many prime numbers as there were. He found and guessed that any natural number greater than 1 can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers.

When the mathematician who traveled all over the world and wrote hundreds of touching poems tirelessly introduced the basic concepts to reporters and interpreted the classical mathematics problems from the perspective of "beauty and symmetry", I, a liberal arts reporter who has not asked mathematics for many years, seemed to experience a little poetry of mathematics.

As the great American poet Pound said, "The most classical is also the most modern."

"Examination-oriented education has damaged the reputation of mathematics"

Although he has made great achievements in mathematical research and literary creation, Cai Tianxin has encountered some practical embarrassment-searching for previous reports about him, journalists mostly focused on his triple identity as a mathematician, poet and traveler, and paid little attention to every aspect of him, especially his mathematical research.

Cai Tianxin attributed the reason to "there was nothing to say about mathematics in previous years, because we always studied the questions raised by foreigners because we obeyed the rules." On the other hand, it also reflects a current situation in China society: the loss of popular scientific spirit.

Its negative impact is like the salt rush caused by the 20 1 1 Fukushima nuclear accident.

"In fact, most people have studied mathematics for more than ten years, but many of them are proud of their poor mathematics!" Cai Tianxin believes that exam-oriented education has damaged the reputation of mathematics, which is the result of forcing students to practice similar problems and exercises repeatedly.

In China, where arts and sciences prevail, Cai Tianxin lamented that he did not attach importance to the humanities and social sciences of natural sciences, and his influence was ultimately limited to his own nation and he could not go to the world. Taking analytical philosophy as an example, because it is based on mathematical logic, it has produced many world-class thinkers and become the mainstream philosophy school in the 20th century.

These are also discussed in Numbers and Roses published by Cai Tianxin ten years ago (published by Sanlian Bookstore Press). This book is a collection of essays written by Cai Tianxin after combining mathematics, art and travel. Fortunately, in recent years, more and more people have read Cai Tianxin's math books, and he and ten colleagues have also founded the magazine Mathematical Culture. This book was also revised and reprinted at the end of last year. This is the fourth Chinese version, and the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are equally divided.

"My book has never entered the charts, nor has it become the top ten books of the year. But people of different ages can watch it. " This makes Cai Tianxin slightly gratified. "After all, they won't be out of date." Although his book is not a best seller, it is.

This may be Cai Tianxin's luck as a mathematician.

China science journal (20 13-0 1-25 7th edition scholar)

20 13 China science news Cai Tianxin: looking for the poetry of mathematics