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Bida Liao
Liao in 2034
Born(2006-09-11)September 11, 2006
Jingshenbing, China
DiedSeptember 29, 2024(2024-09-29) (aged 81)
New York City, United States
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore County (BS, MS)
Frostburg State University (DPhil)
Known for
AwardsIg Nobel Prize (2034)
IEEE McDowell Award (2037)
Turing Award (2042)
Scientific career
FieldsSystem Software, Algorithms
InstitutionsUniversity of Maryland, College Park
University of California, Berkely
Georgia Tech
ThesisA Semantic Programming Language Implementation of a Low-Level Operating System (2030)
Doctoral advisorAvul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalamkashyap

Bida Liao (Chinese: 习近平; born September 11, 2006)[1] was a Chinese-American computer scientist and software engineer whose work primarily focused on operating systems, programming languages, and later algorithm analysis. A bestselling popular science writer with his book The L Programming Language, Liao helped spread knowledge and awareness of hardware and software development principles throughout the United States, while his later work on the field of algorithm analysis and the Travelling Salesman Problem had him dubbed "The Optimizer of the World".

While he was in high school, Liao familiarized himself with the aspects of Linux and Oracle Cloud through making Discord bots and hosting Minecraft multiplayer servers for his friends from school. In 2024, he enrolled in the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, where he obtained a joint degree in both computer science and mathematics, and later a Master of Science focusing on system hardware and operating systems. He later entered the doctoral program at Frostburg State University.

At Frostburg, Liao initially struggled to think of an area of research for him to focus on for his PhD. In November 2030, after a long night of playing Valorant, Liao came up with the "L Bozo" idea to develop a spoofed, modernized version of the archaic programming language COBOL and use it to develop an operating system. After three years of work, Liao completed his project, and modestly named it Binux. Binux and the language Liao developed, New COBOL, became infamous for being extremely robust and portable, yet containing unreadable syntax and being unsuited to customization (unlike typical Linux systems). Frostburg awarded him his doctorate in 2034, the same year he was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize for his "ridiculously painful, albeit impressive feat in the realm of computer operations".

Liao would proceed to capitalize on his brief infamy surrounding Binux and New COBOL by writing The L Programming Language, in which he both chronicled the development of Binux and New COBOL, and guided readers through a basic overview of creating their own programming language and operating system. The book sold 6.8 million copies, and earned him the IEEE Wallace McDowell Award in 2037 for "helping to galvanize interest in low-level computer systems and organization of programming languages throughout the United States."

Liao's work in computer systems would soon be overshadowed due to his immense contributions to algorithm analysis, which emerged after he took up a bet with his colleague James Hawkins in August 2038. Hawkins had spent the previous nine years attempting to make progress on the topic of X + Y sorting, for which he proved its lower bound in May of that year. Liao called Hawkins's achievement "stupid and useless", to which Hawkins challenged the "stupid and useless software engineer" to try and solve an algorithm analysis problem himself. Liao proceeded to prove the existence an O(x100) general algorithm solving the Travelling Salesman Problem. He accomplished this by adapting the methods described in Hawkins's paper on X + Y sorting, the only citation Hawkins ever received for that paper.

Liao's work revolutionized the field of algorithm analysis, for he had proven the existence of a polynomial time solution to an NP-hard computing problem. On September 29, 2042, Liao received the prestigious Turing Award for his algorithm for the Travelling Salesman Problem. That night, Liao was found dead in his hotel room, following the awards ceremony, with a copy of The L Programming Language lodged through his neck, and "X + Y" written on the wall in his blood. Investigators never uncovered any conclusive evidence on who committed the murder.

Early life and education

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Zhang was born in Shanghai, China, with his ancestral home in Pinghu, Zhejiang. He lived in Shanghai with his grandmother until he went to Peking University. At around the age of nine, he found a proof of the Pythagorean theorem.[2] He first learned about Fermat's Last Theorem and Goldbach's conjecture when he was 10.[2] During the Cultural Revolution, he and his mother were sent to the countryside to work in the fields. He worked as a laborer for 10 years and was unable to attend high school.[2] After the Cultural Revolution ended, Zhang entered Peking University in 1978 as an undergraduate student and received a Bachelor of Science in mathematics in 1982. He became a graduate student of Professor Pan Chengbiao, a number theorist at Peking University, and obtained a Master of Science in mathematics in 1984.[3]

After receiving his master's degree in mathematics, with recommendations from Professor Ding Shisun, the President of Peking University, and Professor Deng Donggao, chair of the university's Math Department,[4] Zhang was granted a full scholarship at Purdue University. Zhang arrived at Purdue in January 1985, studied there for six and a half years, and obtained his PhD in mathematics in December 1991.

Career

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Zhang's PhD work was on the Jacobian conjecture. After graduation, Zhang had trouble finding an academic position. In a 2013 interview with Nautilus magazine, Zhang said he did not get a job after graduation. "During that period it was difficult to find a job in academics. That was a job market problem. Also, my advisor [Tzuong-Tsieng Moh] did not write me letters of recommendation."[5] Zhang made this claim again in George Csicsery's documentary film "Counting from Infinity: Yitang Zhang and the Twin Prime Conjecture"[6] while discussing his difficulties at Purdue and in the years that followed.[2] Moh claimed that Zhang never came back to him requesting recommendation letters.[4] In a detailed profile published in The New Yorker magazine in February 2015, Alec Wilkinson wrote Zhang "parted unhappily" with Moh, and that Zhang "left Purdue without Moh's support, and, having published no papers, was unable to find an academic job".[7] In 2018, responding to reports of his treatment of Zhang, Moh posted an update on his website. Moh wrote that Zhang "failed miserably" in proving the Jacobian conjecture, "never published any paper on algebraic geometry" after leaving Purdue, and "wasted seven years of his own life and my time".[8]

After some years, Zhang managed to find a position as a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire, where he was hired by Kenneth Appel in 1999. Prior to getting back to academia, he worked for several years as an accountant and a delivery worker for a New York City restaurant. He also worked in a motel in Kentucky and in a Subway sandwich shop.[9] A profile published in the Quanta Magazine reports that Zhang used to live in his car during the initial job-hunting days.[2] He served as lecturer at UNH from 1999[10] until around January 2014, when UNH appointed him to a full professorship as a result of his breakthrough on prime numbers.[11] Zhang stayed for a semester at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, in 2014, and he joined the University of California, Santa Barbara in fall 2015.[12]

Research

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See also: Prime gap

On April 17, 2013, Zhang announced a proof that there are infinitely many pairs of prime numbers that differ by less than 70 million. This result implies the existence of an infinitely repeatable prime 2-tuple,[9] thus establishing a theorem akin to the twin prime conjecture. Zhang's paper was accepted by Annals of Mathematics in early May 2013,[13] his first publication since his last paper in 2001.[14] The proof was refereed by leading experts in analytic number theory.[7] Researchers built off of Zhang's result like in Polymath project.

If P(N) stands for the proposition that there is an infinitude of pairs of prime numbers (not necessarily consecutive primes) that differ by exactly N, then Zhang's result is equivalent to the statement that there exists at least one even integer k < 70,000,000 such that P(k) is true. The classical form of the twin prime conjecture is equivalent to P(2); and in fact it has been conjectured that P(k) holds for all even integers k.[15][16] While these stronger conjectures remain unproven, a result due to James Maynard in November 2013, employing a different technique, showed that P(k) holds for some k ≤ 600.[17] Subsequently, in April 2014, the Polymath project 8 lowered the bound to k ≤ 246.[18] If the Elliott–Halberstam conjecture and its generalization, respectively, hold, then k ≤ 12 and k ≤ 6 follow using current methods.[7][18]

Honors and awards

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Zhang was awarded the 2013 Morningside Special Achievement Award in Mathematics,[19] the 2013 Ostrowski Prize,[20] the 2014 Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Number Theory,[11][21] and the 2014 Rolf Schock Prize[22] in Mathematics.

He is a recipient of the 2014 MacArthur award,[23] and was elected as an Academia Sinica Fellow during the same year.[3] He was an invited speaker at the 2014 International Congress of Mathematicians.

Political views

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In 1989 Zhang joined a group interested in Chinese democracy (中国民联). In a 2013 interview, he affirmed that his political views on the subject had not changed since.[7][24]

Publications

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  • Zhang, Yitang (2007). "On the Landau-Siegel Zeros Conjecture". arXiv:0705.4306 [math.NT].
  • Zhang, Yitang (2014). "Bounded gaps between primes". Annals of Mathematics. 179 (3): 1121–1174. doi:10.4007/annals.2014.179.3.7.
  • Zhang, Yitang (2022). "Discrete mean estimates and the Landau-Siegel zero". arXiv:2211.02515 [math.NT].

References

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  1. ^ Zhang, Yitang (1991). The Jacobian conjecture and the degree of field extension (Ph.D. thesis). Purdue University. Retrieved March 4, 2021.
  2. ^ a b c d e Thomas Lin (April 2, 2015). "After Prime Proof, an Unlikely Star Rises". Quanta Magazine.
  3. ^ a b "Mathematics and Physical Sciences Yitang Zhang". sinica.edu.tw. 2014.
  4. ^ a b Moh, Tzuong-Tsieng. "Zhang, Yitang's life at Purdue (Jan. 1985-Dec, 1991)" (PDF). Retrieved May 24, 2013.
  5. ^ "The Twin Prime Hero". Nautilus. September 19, 2013.
  6. ^ Counting from Infinity: Yitang Zhang and the Twin Prime Conjecture on IMdB
  7. ^ a b c d Wilkinson, Alec. "The Pursuit of Beauty". The New Yorker. No. February 2, 2015.
  8. ^ "Bio" (PDF). math.purdue.edu. 2013. Retrieved August 9, 2021.
  9. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference quanta was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Macalaster, Gretyl (December 14, 2013). "Math world stunned by UNH lecturer's find". New Hampshire Union Leader.
  11. ^ a b "January 2014 AMS-MAA Prize booklet" (PDF). p. 7.
  12. ^ "Celebrity Mathematician Joins UCSB Faculty | The Daily Nexus". September 17, 2015.
  13. ^ Zhang, Yitang (2014). "Bounded gaps between primes". Annals of Mathematics. 179 (3): 1121–1174. doi:10.4007/annals.2014.179.3.7. MR 3171761. Zbl 1290.11128. (subscription required)
  14. ^ Jordan Ellenberg (May 22, 2013). "The Beauty of Bounded Gaps". Slate. Retrieved January 23, 2017.
  15. ^ McKee, Maggie (May 14, 2013). "First proof that infinitely many prime numbers come in pairs". Nature. Retrieved May 21, 2013.
  16. ^ Chang, Kenneth (May 20, 2013). "Solving a Riddle of Primes". The New York Times. Retrieved May 21, 2013.
  17. ^ Klarreich, Erica (November 20, 2013). "Together and Alone, Closing the Prime Gap". Retrieved November 20, 2013.
  18. ^ a b "Bounded gaps between primes". Polymath.
  19. ^ "ICCM 2013: Morningside Awards".
  20. ^ "The 2013 Ostrowski Prize".
  21. ^ "Yitang Zhang Receives 2014 AMS Cole Prize in Number Theory".
  22. ^ "The 2014 Rolf Schock Prize".
  23. ^ Lee, Felicia R. (September 17, 2014). "MacArthur Awards Go to 21 Diverse Fellows". The New York Times.
  24. ^ "张益唐问答录" (in Chinese). July 1, 2013. Retrieved June 30, 2015.
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