Andrew Wiles Quotes

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Andrew Wiles

Profession : Mathematician

Birth : April 11, 1953

Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one.

Andrew Wiles

However impenetrable it seems, if you don't try it, then you can never do it.

Andrew Wiles

I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.

Andrew Wiles

The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.

Andrew Wiles

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.

Andrew 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 Wiles

Then when I reached college I realized that many people had thought about the problem during the 18th and 19th centuries and so I studied those methods.

Andrew Wiles

Always try the problem that matters most to you.

Andrew Wiles

I really believed that I was on the right track, but that did not mean that I would necessarily reach my goal.

Andrew Wiles

I loved doing problems in school. I'd take them home and make up new ones of my own. But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library. I was just browsing through the section of math books and I found this one book, which was all about one particular problem - Fermat's Last Theorem.

Andrew Wiles

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.

Andrew Wiles

I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof.

Andrew Wiles

That particular odyssey is now over. My mind is now at rest.

Andrew Wiles

I realized that anything to do with Fermat's Last Theorem generates too much interest.

Andrew 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 Wiles

The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis.

Andrew Wiles

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. There's no reason why these problems shouldn't be easy, and yet they turn out to be extremely intricate.

Andrew Wiles

Fermat said he had a proof.

Andrew Wiles

The only way I could relax was when I was with my children.

Andrew Wiles

There's also a sense of freedom. I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about if all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night, and that went on for eight years.

Andrew Wiles