NFL球员不打球了，去解数学难题

A person who used to play professional football has now become a maths teacher, and he has also proved a conjecture that stood for many years.

His name is John Urschel; he played for the Baltimore Ravens for three years.

However, when he was at university he already loved maths, and before becoming a professional player he had already earned a master's degree.

Later, he went to MIT to study maths, studying and playing ball at the same time.

Both jobs took a lot of time, he had no time to spend with his girlfriend, and later he felt this decision was not a good one.

In 2017, he stopped playing professional ball in order to focus on studying maths.

Four years later, he received his doctorate, and two years after that he became a maths professor at MIT.

Recently, he proved a conjecture about random matrices; a conjecture is an idea that mathematicians believe is true but have not yet proved.

A matrix is a table made of numbers; a random matrix is one where the numbers in the table are chosen at random.

Computers use a method for solving equations called Gaussian elimination; when they do, the numbers in the table change.

A conjecture that has stood for many years says that for one class of random matrices, if you choose the steps using a common method, the numbers will rarely become especially large.

Urschel provided a proof, writing up why this is true as a paper that can be checked.

The paper also mentions that AI models gave some help, but he did not lose his interest in maths because of this.

He says he still wants to know why things are the way they are.

If you really love learning, but your work also takes a lot of time, what would you give up for learning?