In an age of AI-induced answers to complex mathematical problems, Chinese mathematician Sun Zhiwei maintains that curiosity and asking good questions are more important then ever.
Over a career spent probing the edges of number theory, Sun, a 61-year-old professor at Nanjing University’s department of mathematics, has built a vast landscape of problems – more than 1,000 and counting – for the global research community to tackle.
While traditional mathematical training emphasises mastering existing formulas and proving established theorems, Sun said true progress relied on using intuition to discover new questions and using logic to solve them.
“If a discipline has no conjectures, people no longer know what to do and the field approaches a standstill,” Sun told China Science Daily.