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发帖数: 38600 | 2 is adviser, T. T. Moh, with whom he parted unhappily, recently wrote a
description on his Web site of Zhang as a graduate student: “When I looked
into his eyes, I found a disturbing soul, a burning bush, an explorer who
wanted to reach the North Pole.” Zhang left Purdue without Moh’s support,
and, having published no papers, was unable to find an academic job. He
lived, sometimes with friends, in Lexington, Kentucky, where he had
occasional work, and in New York City, where he also had friends and
occasional work. In Kentucky, he became involved with a group interested in
Chinese democracy. Its slogan was “Freedom, Democracy, Rule of Law, and
Pluralism.” A member of the group, a chemist in a lab, opened a Subway
franchise as a means of raising money. “Since Tom was a genius at numbers,
” another member of the group told me, “he was invited to help him.”
Zhang kept the books. “Sometimes, if it was busy at the store, I helped
with the cash register,” Zhang told me recently. “Even I knew how to make
the sandwiches, but I didn’t do it so much.” When Zhang wasn’t working,
he would go to the library at the University of Kentucky and read journals
in algebraic geometry and number theory. “For years, I didn’t really keep
up my dream in mathematics,” he said. |
