Sparkling love of literature in young mathematician Phan Thanh Nam

Two years ago, Professor Phan Thanh Nam, a 35-year-old mathematician who is teaching at Ludwig Maximilian University (Munich, Germany), was the first Vietnamese person to receive the EMS award from the European Mathematical Society. At the end of 2022, Professor Phan Thanh Nam and his small family returned to their homeland at the invitation of the Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics. The young mathematician has given many talks and seminars at schools in Phu Yen and universities across the country, inspiring love for Mathematics, literature, etc.

Comrade Pham Dai Duong (right), member of the Party Central Committee, Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee, Head of the Provincial National Assembly Delegation at the meeting (September 8, 2022), presented a souvenir to Professor Phan Thanh Nam. Photo: PHUONG HOANG

 

According to Professor Phan Thanh Nam, although pursuing a career in Mathematics, the son of the "Chop Chai mountain", a former student of Luong Van Chanh High School for the Gifted, sees literature as a pure, sparkling love and has interesting perspectives on the connection between literature and mathematics.

Poem of life prediction

In the 11th grade (2001-2002), Professor Phan Thanh Nam wrote a poem, Teacher and Student , to give to his teacher on Vietnamese Teachers' Day, which was very touching. Unexpectedly, it was a premonition of his future path: " ... The purple autumn afternoon makes the student's heart purple too/ Looking at the teacher's shadow, it tilts the space/ The path of Mathematics is like the path of life in all directions/ Listening to the teacher's words, don't be afraid of hardships... ".

Perhaps poets often find life cramped so they sometimes need alcohol to feel elated as if living in another dimension, while mathematicians often live in multidimensional space, even infinitely dimensional, so they need sobriety to reduce the number of dimensions.

Although difficulties are predicted, desire, passion and love will help us overcome rapids. “… The teacher taught that learning math is difficult/ Because desire has no shore/ Like a boat going upstream/ Overcoming rapids to reach the sea of poetry ”.

Returning to Luong Van Chanh High School for the Gifted, Professor Phan Thanh Nam was like a deer returning to its old stream in the warm welcome of teachers and junior students. According to him, in mathematics or any subject, learners need to see the beauty in its essence. Learning is not for an exam or to please parents, but for life and one's own passion. "I find mathematics very beautiful, so I am passionate about it. When I am passionate, I try to study more. The more I study, the better I get and the more beautiful it becomes. It becomes a circle. The question is how to jump into that circle?", Professor Phan Thanh Nam shared.

“My way of balancing is that outside of school hours, I try to play some sports , read books... For mathematicians, this is even more necessary, because studying math is “dry, difficult, miserable, crazy”, so I have to read literature, poetry, listen to music to relax and balance. This helps a lot in studying math”, Professor Nam added.

When mathematicians analyze and comment on poetry

In the vast ocean of knowledge, literature is a place to return to, a spiritual refuge. Inspired by this return trip, Professor Phan Thanh Nam saw an interesting relationship between literature and mathematics, a completely new perspective. It is the art of symmetry, duality and literary phase transition in relation to mathematics and physics.

Professor Phan Thanh Nam began with the sentences in the Proclamation of Victory over the Wu by Nguyen Trai. “ Since Trieu, Dinh, Ly, Tran dynasties, many generations have built the foundation of independence/ Together with Han, Duong, Tong, Nguyen, each side has dominated a region ”. Here, there is a strong element of symmetry and antithesis through the subtle parallel prose style.

Or The Tale of Kieu by Nguyen Du:

The person returns to the shadow of the fifth watch

The one who travels thousands of miles alone in the distance

Who split the moon in two?

Half printed on the pillow, half shining on the long journey.

 

These are verses about separation filled with mathematical colors with 6 pairs of opposite numbers: one - five, ten thousand - one, two - half. In the first two verses, Nguyen Du describes the loneliness of the person returning and the person leaving by using the symmetrical method when placing the loneliness in the time of the shadow of five watches parallel to the loneliness in the space of thousands of miles alone. Then, he pushes the loneliness to a new level by changing the phase: from a common moon in reality - the only moon that both rests on the lonely pillow and shines on the long road, now suddenly turns into two separate halves of the moon in the mind - one stays in the boudoir, missing the other goes thousands of miles away.

In modern 20th century poetry, Nguyen Binh's poetry also has subtle symmetry.

I go forever into the mountains

I stroked the curtains of the gazebo

Withered leaves fall all over the city

Golden heart still remember each other?

(A sky full of officials)

In the first two sentences, Nguyen Binh uses symmetry to talk about the one who leaves and the one who stays, but does not speak in a reciprocal manner like in The Tale of Kieu , but emphasizes the contrast between movement and stillness, between long and short, between horizontal and vertical, between wild and refined. This creates a certain distance between the two characters. Then in the next two sentences, he erases this distance by developing the art of mind-scene parallelism: a vast golden space with fallen leaves of the capital city covering the ground is transformed into a small golden space in the mind: the golden heart asks, do you still miss each other?

The climax of Mot troi quan tai is the four very modern concluding sentences:

This afternoon... I miss this afternoon the most

A glimpse of you in a full glass of wine

I drink you and I drink you

A sky full of officials, how can you be drunk?

Here, Nguyen Binh surpassed the art of his predecessors, when he used antithesis not only for the scene (a pale sky) but also for the person (her shadow), reducing both into a glass of wine. Along with that was the subtle transition: assimilating both the scene and the person into the wine, so that when he drank it all in one glass, it turned into boundless longing.

“Reading Nguyen Binh’s poems, I suddenly thought: poets are the ones who turn wine into poetry, while mathematicians turn coffee into theorems (Alfréd Rényi talking about Paul Erdős). Perhaps poets often find life cramped, so they sometimes need wine to feel elated, as if living in another dimension, while mathematicians, who often live in multidimensional space, even infinitely, need sobriety to reduce the number of dimensions,” Professor Nam contemplated.

Professor Phan Thanh Nam exchanges study skills with students of Duy Tan High School. Photo: MINH KY

What a fresh and interesting way to connect and analyze!

And then mathematician Phan Thanh Nam generalized the law of beauty in life: “Everything exists in the world because it optimizes something. In poetry, perhaps poets want to optimize the path from heart to heart. Strangely enough, people have extremely symmetrical faces, hands, and feet, but the heart is always on the left side of the chest. So perhaps symmetry explains the beauty on the outside, but asymmetry touches the beauty deep inside.”

With Professor Phan Thanh Nam, I have a feeling of intimacy, closeness, not dry at all, because the young mathematician's soul is soaked in literature, creating a personality, a soul, absorbed from his parents, family and rustic homeland. Professor Phan Thanh Nam is like a "mathematical phoenix who loves literature". Under the shade of the parasol tree on the simple porch at the foot of Chop Chai mountain, that phoenix has flown over the sky of his homeland and reached out to the world !

QUYNH MAI

Source: https://baophuyen.vn/94/292334/lap-lanh-tinh-yeu-van-chuong-noi-nha-toan-hoc-tre-phan-thanh-nam.html