Geng Ji, a retired professor from the School of Mathematics and Statistics at HNU, is still working on mathematical derivations on a daily basis, even in his nineties, a testament to his lifelong love and passion for mathematics and education.
Few people know that math was the subject he feared most when he was a child and he couldn’t even surpass 30 points on the math exams in primary school. The principal’s warning—“You cannot graduate with such poor math grades”—spurred him to “conquer” mathematics. Starting from arithmetic, Geng Ji redid all the problems he got wrong three times, and copied the formulas he did not understand on draft paper. As a result, his grades improved by 20 points, and eventually he was able to obtain the full score on the middle school entrance exam. From fear to love, the journey marked the beginning of his lifelong bond with math.
In 1950, Geng Ji was accepted into Fudan University as a student of the famous mathematician Professor Yang Wuzhi, joining an algebra research group. In the 1950s, he published Eigenvalue Bounds of Matrices and three other papers one after another in the journals Acta Mathematica Sinica and Advances in Mathematics (China). These papers were commented on by Mathematical Reviews of the United States and Referativnyĭ zhurnal: Matematika of the Soviet Union. They were listed as references in the journal of the Computational Methods of Linear Algebra (1963) of the Soviet Union and were introduced by Mathematics in China over the Past Decade. He was not even 30 at the time.
In 1985, Genji was transferred from Xi’An Jiaotong University to Hainan University as an instructor. The students had trouble understanding his heavy accent, so he would find the students in their dormitories and help them individually solve the tricky problems every night. He would teach them in accordance with their aptitude, believing that “The teachers are to blame if their students fail to follow the lecture.” During his career, he repeatedly turned down administrative positions in order to focus completely on scientific research and teaching.
His work has been widely acknowledged by academics: in 1989, a mathematical formula was named the “Geng Ji Triangle” in the contemporarily published book of Professor Tang Youhua; in 1991, he published Bernoulli Numbers and Euler Numbers, which won the Hainan Provincial Science and Technology Progress Award in 1992. He also won the Hainan Mathematical Society Paper Award in both 1988 and 1992, and was awarded both national and provincial allowances as a distinguished expert.
After his retirement in 1994, he chose to stay at Hainan University for further research and study. He pores over Hainan Daily and Reference News every week, cutting and keeping the related clips about the university. He is a witness to the development of the university, from several crude bungalows into a national civilized campus over the past four decades. Retired from teaching, he kept writing prolific ally: studying the connection between math and linguistics and archaeology, trying to use mathematical logic to explain the numerals of the oracle bone inscriptions, and exploring the permutation patterns of mahjong tiles and playing cards. He always says that “The charm of mathematics lies in its interdisciplinary nature.”
He always reflects on his own shortcomings, holding that “One should learn to be a moral person before pursuing academic research” and “remain free from complacency and make steady progress.” He not only teaches his students to solve problems but also guides them to behave with integrity. He has repeatedly urged his students to be down-to-earth, upholding academic integrity and always immersing themselves wholeheartedly in research over decades. He has dedicated himself to one lifelong equation: “Scientific research + educating students = my life’s answer.”
Original link：https://www.peopleapp.com/column/30051195623-500007303358
Translated by Huang Qian
Proofread by Xiao Yanling
