[arjmandi]

He had a talk three days ago, explaining his thesis where he remarked: “When the paper was posted online just a few days ago, many people who don’t focus on mathematics didn’t understand it, thinking that it was the Landau-Siegel zeros conjecture solved, and some even thought that it proved the Riemann Hypothesis is wrong. Actually, I don’t have this ability. I only partially solve the Riemann hypothesis within a certain range. If I say I overturned Riemann Hypothesis, few people would believe it.”[1]

Maybe he loves what he's doing and that's the root of being stubborn and "genuinely oblivious to ordinary material feedback". Although love or passion can be overrated or too general to describe his attitude toward problem-solving, I think people can't be just stubborn, there's a drive that holds them to a higher standard.

[1]https://pandaily.com/mathematician-yitang-zhang-confirms-par...