Translator: Dreamscribe
Advanced Mathematics Institute, 3rd Floor, Main Conference Room,
“I’ll bring up the data now.”
As the coordinator of the Korean Mathematical Society gestured, a red light lit up on the camera for recording. Immediately after, a large scanner made a whirring sound.
The screen on the wall vividly recreated the seminar room of the Gifted High School in a panoramic view.
The automaton on the blackboard and the A3 papers covering the wall filled the screen. The resolution was so clear that even the erased chalk marks were visible in detail.
The era when professors gathered in lecture halls with paper and pen to verify theories had already ended.
Now, every paper was digitized, and if necessary, even virtual experiments could be reproduced with proof assistants and mathematical software.
Cronen lowered the slide and spoke.
“You’ve reviewed the data thoroughly, right?
Let’s proceed by the standard method. In the order of notation interpretation, verification of consistency and completeness, then counterexample search.”
Walter Scott wrote the four steps in the middle of the whiteboard.
Right next to him, Chloe began converting Seo-ha’s proof into standard notation on the electronic board.
Georg nodded.
“So, the pattern of colors appearing at the boundary is converted into variable-length words, and the finite automaton A reads the word and determines whether it’s expandable or not?
Unbelievable. How did he even come up with this?”
Shimura raised his hand.
“But was there a specific reason why the boundary rules had to be exactly thirty-two?”
“It’s in the notebook.”
Chloe enlarged and displayed the scanned image. Seo-ha’s handwriting appeared clearly.
“There are thirty-two equivalence classes of local boundary rules derived from the exception group. It’s minimized using the Myhill–Nerode style, reducing the seemingly large number of cases to the minimal number of patterns that actually need to be distinguished.”
Walter laughed.
“He could’ve just written minimal DFA (Deterministic Finite Automaton), but he went all the way to Myhill–Nerode. Cute.”
Seo-ha, who had not received a college education, had a presentation style and notation that were significantly different from those of established mathematicians. The verification team found it both endearing and astonishing.
Because within it were ideas that even seasoned researchers wouldn’t easily have thought of.
The verification continued for an entire month.
Dozens of mathematicians delved into Seo-ha’s theory from multiple angles.
They examined it meticulously, down to the smallest detail, to see if there were any holes in the proof. And one by one, green lights began to appear on the checklist.
All the hard-to-decipher codes were decoded and substituted, and in terms of consistency and completeness, it received a “no error” judgment.
The final step left was the search for counterexamples.
Young researchers opened their laptops at the back of the conference room.
They automatically generated small planar graphs, extracted only the boundaries, and passed them through Seo-ha’s automaton.
On another side, Seo-ha’s four-color theorem was implemented into an algorithm to test whether it could actually color the graphs.
Each time the two results matched perfectly, a green light appeared on the screen.
As the number of test cases increased, tension filled the conference room.
One researcher, running the algorithm, held a coffee cup but couldn’t take a single sip as his fingers trembled.
He thought to himself,
‘What’s happening today will definitely be talked about among mathematicians for a long time.’
The sense that he was part of a historical moment thrilled him.
“Matched up to ten faces.”
“Matched up to fourteen faces.”
“No issues up to twenty faces.”
Hundreds of thousands of samples were run to find a counterexample, but no warning sound was heard.
And at some point, everyone had come to the same realization.
That this boy’s automaton was complete.
***
From early morning, the Advanced Mathematics Institute was abuzz.
Black vans and broadcast trucks were lined up, occupying the road in front of the building. Journalists from various countries gathered in groups, adjusting camera angles and moving about busily.
Voices speaking English, Japanese, French, and German mingled in the air.
Shim Hyun-woo, a reporter from MBS, looked around curiously.
“Didn’t they say it was some math presentation? Is this really worth such a scoop?”
His senior reporter clicked his tongue, looking at him with disappointment.
“Do you think these people came here just for math?”
“Huh? Then what?”
“Look at the foreign press. Even if Korea had a Nobel Prize winner, they wouldn’t rush in like this.”
Reporter Shim nodded. He thought that was probably the case too.
“Then what’s the real reason?”
“You’ve got a long way to go if you want to catch a scoop.
Obviously, it’s because a thirteen-year-old kid supposedly proved some theorem. That’s why it’s such a commotion. You know, there was something similar in the West too, when a thirteen-year-old became a chess grandmaster....”
“Oh! Magnus Carlsen? I know him! Back then, all the major networks like CNN and BBC rushed to Norway, right?”
“It’s something like that.”
A platform began to be set up in the open space in front of the main gate.
And before long, scholars started entering one after another.
“That’s Elijah Cronen!”
“Professor Walter Scott from MIT is here too.”
“Professor Shimura! Please look this way!”
Just the sight of world-renowned mathematicians standing there was enough to be a picture.
Reporters in the front row hurried to adjust their camera focus.
Flashes went off repeatedly, and the hands of reporters holding laptops began moving busily.
“Ready?”
Cronen’s voice came in a whisper. A staff member from the Institute nodded at him.
Cronen walked out to the platform.
His gray eyes briefly scanned the audience. Dozens of cameras followed him, flashing continuously.
He lightly adjusted the microphone and began the announcement in a low voice.
“For the past month, my fellow researchers and I have been verifying a new proof of the Four Color Theorem proposed in Korea.”
He paused briefly and looked toward the audience.
Reporters held their breath as they tapped away on their keyboards.
“To begin with the conclusion first:
We analyzed every step of the proof in detail and conducted nearly a million rounds of automated verification.
As a result, we have not found any critical errors that would overturn the proof thus far.
We believe this proof holds sufficient persuasive power, and we regard it as one of the great advances in the history of mathematics built by humanity.”
Mathematicians never speak in definitive terms.
They always add phrases like “further verification is required” or “it’s still just a hypothesis” out of habit.
Because they know all too well that a single small crack can bring down achievements that took decades to build.
In that context, the wording “one of the great advances” used by the verification team was, in fact, the highest form of praise that could be allowed among mathematicians.
For a moment, the press conference was in uproar.
Reporters all raised their hands at once and shouted.
“Are you saying this effectively means the proof is accepted?”
“Where is the student? Didn’t he come to this event today?”
“Is it really true that the boy proved it alone? Wasn’t there possibly an adult helping him behind the scenes?”
The final question halted Cronen, who had been about to leave the platform.
“Who are you?”
An East Asian man stepped forward and revealed his affiliation.
“I’m Abe Shintaro, a reporter from Sankei Shimbun.
Are we really supposed to believe that a thirteen-year-old boy has proven a problem that mathematicians have failed to solve for over 150 years? Couldn’t it be that some adults were involved in the process?”
Cronen stared directly at the reporter. After a moment of silence, he replied, sounding displeased.
“Do we look like fools to you?”
"Pardon?"
“A proof isn’t evaluated simply by whether the conclusion is right or wrong.
The way logic is developed, what definitions and lemmas are chosen, how symbols are used, each of these remains as a unique signature of the researcher.
In this paper, we saw both the raw passion of youth and the leap of a fresh idea no one had ever thought of. Your question is an absurd insult to mathematicians.”
Everyone in the press conference room held their breath, listening to his words.
“Are you really saying that the boy did it alone?”
The reporter did not back down. Then Cronen threw a question back at him.
“Mr. Reporter, did you go to university?”
Caught off guard, the reporter stammered a reply.
“Uh… y-yes! I did.”
“Then what’s the longest time you’ve spent thinking about a single problem?”
It was a simple question, yet the reporter couldn’t answer easily.
“Uh....”
“Ten minutes? Thirty?
I’ll bet it didn’t go over an hour. Not because you’re incompetent. It’s just that most people are like that.”
But do you know that Yu Seo-ha has been thinking about this problem for over seven years? If you don’t understand what that means, I won’t explain any further.
Sometimes, the heavens pour all their starlight into one person.”
The last words were barely audible,
But the meaning was clearly conveyed. A sense of both relief and pride spread across the faces of the Korean broadcasting officials listening to the announcement.
“Ahem!”
The reporter from Sankei Shimbun stepped back, visibly embarrassed.
A moment of silence followed.
As Cronen stepped down from the platform, a member of the Mathematical Society quickly moved to wrap things up.
“This concludes today’s press conference. Further details will be announced through the Korean Mathematical Society.”
It was a matter far removed from the general public’s interests, but TV stations, starved for a major story, released special reports on an unprecedented scale.
[Fields Medal a Matter of Time? 13-Year-Old Korean Prodigy Draws Global Attention]
[Birth of the ‘Mozart of Math’ in Korea, Global Media in a Frenzy]
[Do We Need to Rewrite the Textbooks? Shocking Proof by 13-Year-Old Boy]
[A Boy’s 7-Year Struggle, Finally Destroys a 170-Year Problem in Mathematics]
That evening, one broadcasting company scrapped its scheduled programming to air an emergency special.
Even math and science YouTubers, who were usually ignored, scrambled to go live and held impromptu joint streams.
But someone moved even faster than them, Woo-hyun, who had been itching to brag about Seo-ha.
[Frame Series LIVE - Shin Woo-hyun, talking about THAT today!]
“Guys, before we start Lecture 5 today, let me talk about something else for a moment.”
└What’s he going to say now ㅋㅋㅋ
└Is this another story about a girl from his Princeton days?
└It’s on the thumbnail. The real genius in Korea he mentioned before.
└No way ㅋㅋ
“That ‘no way’ is actually true. I told you, didn’t I? There might be a once-in-a-century genius in Korea too.
And I’ve said before, mathematicians should be judged by their accomplishments, right? Well, I think this is more than enough to finally talk about it.”
└Goosebumps... that was Yu Seo-ha?
└Holy ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
└You're not just hyping this up, are you?
“You think I’d hype something like this?”
└Spill the tea! Did he come to your academy for consulting?
└Is he maybe taking class with us right now?
“The first time I saw Seo-ha was when he was in first grade in elementary school, and right then I knew- ah! This kid is no joke!”
└Seo-ha ㅋㅋㅋ acting like you’re close ㅋㅋㅋ
└What did he do?
└Hurry up!
└The stream’s already packed, and now it’s going to blow up again?
“This seven-year-old kid was working on the Four Color Theorem.
He was sticking colored paper in a sketchbook, drawing graphs with crayons while doing it, and when I looked closely, the reasoning was more advanced than college level. Do you know how I felt seeing that?”
└You already favor smart kids, and if it was to that level ㅋㅋㅋ
└Wow! He was doing it since back then?
“I was shocked too. I had no idea he was still working on it.
He doesn’t say anything until he finishes a proof. He’s so quiet! Even after solving it, he was calm. Seo-ha knew. That one day, he would definitely solve it.”
└So is he your student too?
└Wait, are we all alumni?
└What did you teach him?
“I didn’t teach him. I just sent him the books he needed to read. From the beginning, he wasn’t someone I could handle. Let’s just say I gave him a little direction.”
└So is he getting the Fields Medal now?
└Is Korea finally going to have one?
“Hey, you punks! The Fields Medal is given once every four years. This year’s winner already came out. So even at the earliest, it’ll be four years from now.”
└Wow I thought it was annual.
└Why are they so stingy? Even the Nobel Prize is yearly.
“And the math world is ten times more conservative than you think. What did Professor Elijah Cronen say this time? ‘We have not found any critical errors.’ That’s about the strongest statement you’ll get.
Now that the formal paper will be published, a bunch of math professors who’ve been bored will jump in and try to verify it again. That’ll go on for about two years before it’s finally recognized.”
└Damn that’s intense...
└Ugh, I don’t think I could ever be a mathematician.
└Even without that, we still can’t.
“Anyway, Seo-ha is now world-class.
And what else did Cronen say? ‘A great advance in the history of mathematics built by humanity!’
Damn! I know that guy, and he never says stuff like that lightly. That just shows how much of an impression Seo-ha made.”
└He’s become a celeb in the math world...
└Somehow, that doesn’t sound all that enviable.
└Maybe he’ll show up on a variety show?
“Okay, I’ve bragged enough. Let’s get back to the lecture!”
Woo-hyun picked up the chalk with a slight smile.
But that day’s stream had an unexpected side effect.
As a college entrance exam instructor, Woo-hyun began receiving visits from parents of elementary students.
All of them asked him the same thing, “My child is very smart too. Can they become like Yu Seo-ha?”, and requested Woo-hyun to personally guide them.