Andrew Wiles Quotes

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Andrew Wiles

Profession : Mathematician

Birth : April 11, 1953

I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about it 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

I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.

Andrew Wiles

But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library.

Andrew Wiles

There are proofs that date back to the Greeks that are still valid today.

Andrew Wiles

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.

Andrew 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 Wiles

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.

Andrew Wiles

I know it's a rare privilege, but if one can really tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it's more rewarding than anything I can imagine.

Andrew Wiles

It could be that the methods needed to take the next step may simply be beyond present day mathematics. Perhaps the methods I needed to complete the proof would not be invented for a hundred years.

Andrew Wiles

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.

Andrew Wiles