Hua Luogeng
was born in 1910 in a small businessman family in Jintan County, Jiangsu Province.
In 1925, after graduating from junior high school, he was unable to continue his studies due to family poverty.
In 1928, 18-year-old Hua Luogeng went to Jintan Middle School as a clerk on the recommendation of his mathematics teacher Wang Weike. Unfortunately, he contracted typhoid fever that year and was bedridden for five months, leaving his left leg paralyzed. But he was not pessimistic or discouraged, but tenaciously studied on his own. Once, he found an error in Professor Su Jiaju's paper on the solution of quintic algebraic equations: the value of a twelfth-order determinant was calculated incorrectly, so he wrote his calculation results and opinions in a paper titled "Su Jiaju's Five Algebraic Equations". The article "The reason why the solution of the quadratic equation cannot be established" was sent to the Shanghai "Science" magazine. This article was published in Science magazine in 1930, when Hua Luogeng was only 20 years old. It was this paper that completely changed Hua Luogeng's future life path.
Xiong Qinglai, who was the dean of the Department of Mathematics at Tsinghua University at the time, saw this paper and greatly appreciated it. I asked everywhere which university Hua Luogeng was a professor at, but everyone said they didn't know. It happened that there was a teacher in the Department of Mathematics named Tang Peijing who knew Hua Luogeng. He told Xiong Qinglai that Hua Luogeng was not a university professor, but just a self-taught young man. Xiong Qinglai was eager to love talents and did not care about academic qualifications. He immediately asked Tang Peijing to invite Hua Luogeng to work at Tsinghua University. In 1931, Tang Peijing took the photo sent by Hua Luogeng to Beijing Qianmen Railway Station to pick up Hua Luogeng who was traveling north from Jintan. Hua Luogeng, the future great mathematician, walked into Tsinghua University just like this, dragging his broken leg and holding a crutch. At first, he worked as an assistant in the mathematics department, responsible for sending and receiving letters, typing, and keeping books and materials. He studied on his own while working. Xiong Qinglai also asked him to often go to the classroom with his students to listen to classes. The diligent and studious Hua Luogeng completed all the courses in the mathematics department of the university in just one year and made great progress in his knowledge. Xiong Qinglai attached great importance to this young man. Sometimes when he encountered complex calculations, he would shout loudly: "Hua Luogeng, come here and help me calculate this problem!" Two years later, Hua Luogeng was promoted to teaching assistant, and then to teaching assistant. lecturer. Later, Xiong Qinglai chose to send him to Cambridge University in England for further studies. In 1938, Hua Luogeng returned to China and became a professor at Southwest Associated University. He was only 28 years old.
Hua Luogeng later became a world-famous mathematician and made outstanding contributions in many fields such as number theory, matrix geometry, typical groups, automorphic function theory, multiple complex variable function theory, partial differential equations, etc. . He has authored more than 200 papers and ten monographs, became a foreign academician of the American Academy of Sciences, and received honorary doctorates from the University of Nancy in France and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His name has been entered into the Smith-Sonny Museum in Washington, USA, and is listed as one of the eighty-eight great men of mathematics today in the Museum of Science and Technology in Chicago.
In 1936, upon the recommendation of Professor Xiong Qinglai, Hua Luogeng went to England to study in Cambridge. Hardy, a famous mathematician in the 20th century, had long heard that Hua Luogeng was very talented. He said: "You can get a doctorate in two years." But Hua Luogeng said: "I don't want to get a doctorate. I only ask for a visit." "I came to Cambridge to learn, not to get a degree." In two years, he concentrated on the theory of stacked prime numbers and published 18 papers on the Waring problem, the Talley problem, and the odd Goldbach problem. The famous "Fahrenheit's Theorem" was derived, showing the outstanding wisdom and ability of Chinese mathematicians to the world.
In 1946, Hua Luogeng was invited to give lectures in the United States and was hired as a tenured professor at the University of Illinois with a high salary. His family also came to the United States to settle down, with a house and a car, and they lived a very comfortable life. At that time, many people thought that Hua Luogeng would not come back.
The birth of New China touched the heart of Hua Luogeng, who loved the motherland. In 1950, he resolutely gave up his wealthy life in the United States and returned to his motherland. He also wrote an open letter to Chinese students studying in the United States, mobilizing them to return to China and participate in socialist construction. In his letter, he revealed his pure love for China: "Friends! Although Liangyuan is good, it is not the hometown where I have lived for a long time. I am coming back... For the sake of the country and the nation, we should go back..." Although mathematics has no national boundaries , but mathematicians have their own motherland.
Hua Luogeng returned from overseas and was warmly welcomed by the party and the people. He returned to Tsinghua University and was appointed director of the Department of Mathematics, and was soon appointed director of the Institute of Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. From then on, the real golden period of his mathematical research began. Not only did he continuously make outstanding achievements that attracted world attention, he also enthusiastically cared for and trained a large number of mathematical talents. In order to win the crown jewel of mathematics, he devoted a lot of effort to the research, experiment and promotion of applied mathematics.
According to incomplete statistics, Hua Luogeng *** published 152 important mathematics papers, 9 mathematics books, and 11 mathematics popular science books in the past few decades. He was also elected as a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences and a fellow of Third World Scientists.
From graduating from junior high school to becoming the People’s Mathematician, Hua Luogeng has gone through a tortuous and glorious life path and won great honors for his motherland.