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Andrew J. Wiles
Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge.
Andrew J. Wiles
Perhaps the methods I needed to complete the proof would not be invented for a hundred years. So even if I was on the right track, I could be living in the wrong century.
Andrew J. Wiles
Perhaps I can best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of a journey through a dark unexplored mansion.
Andrew J. Wiles
Nobody had any idea how to approach Taniyama-Shimura but at least it was mainstream mathematics.
Andrew J. Wiles
My wife's only known me while I've been working on Fermat.
Andrew J. Wiles
My wife had heard of Fermat's Last Theorem, but at that time she had no idea of the romantic significance it had for mathematicians, that it had been such a thorn in our flesh for so many years.
Andrew J. Wiles
Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they know there are no solutions up to four million or four billion, they really want to know that there are no solutions up to infinity.
Andrew J. Wiles
Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one.
Andrew J. Wiles
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.
Andrew J. Wiles
It's a 20th century proof, it couldn't have been done in the 19th century, let alone the seventeenth century. The techniques used in this proof just weren't around in Fermat's time.