Andrew Wiles
Andrew Wiles
Sir Andrew John Wiles KBE FRSis a British mathematician and a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in number theory. He is most notable for proving Fermat's Last Theorem, for which he received the 2016 Abel Prize. Wiles has received numerous other honours...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth11 April 1953
achievement english-mathematician hard mathematics sure
I'm sure that some of them will be very hard and I'll have a sense of achievement again, but nothing will mean the same to me - there's no other problem in mathematics that could hold me the way that this one did.
definitions problem mathematics
The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.
english-mathematician extremely hard hundred mathematics turns
Well, some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve.
english-mathematician excitement hope lots mathematics realize seeing solving
I hope that seeing the excitement of solving this problem will make young mathematicians realize that there are lots and lots of other problems in mathematics which are going to be just as challenging in the future.
english-mathematician knew moment solve ten understand year
Here was a problem, that I, a ten year old, could understand and I knew from that moment that I would never let it go. I had to solve it.
thinking understanding problem
I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about.
mean solutions
Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one.
work interesting long
It's fine to work on any problem, so long as it generates interesting mathematics along the way - even if you don't solve it at the end of the day.
math long attention
We've lost something that's been with us for so long, and something that drew a lot of us into mathematics. But perhaps that's always the way with math problems, and we just have to find new ones to capture our attention.
mind odyssey particular
That particular odyssey is now over. My mind is now at rest.
children relax way
The only way I could relax was when I was with my children.
school problem problems-in-school
I loved doing problems in school.
mean track goal
I really believed that I was on the right track, but that did not mean that I would necessarily reach my goal
library problem found
But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library.