Andrew Wiles
Andrew Wiles was born on April 11, 1953, in Cambridge, England. His father, Maurice, was the Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford. Since he was a young child, Andrew was always interested in mathematics. He would finish all of his schoolwork only to make up new math problems that he solved on his own. He also rented out books from the library near him, which he used to find new math
problems that would challenge and teach him.
famous-mathematicians.org
problems that would challenge and teach him.
famous-mathematicians.org
Wiles' Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is a proof of the modularity theorem for semistable elliptic curves released by Andrew Wiles, which, together with Ribet's theorem, provides a proof for Fermat's Last Theorem. Both Fermat's Last Theorem and the Modularity Theorem were almost universally considered inaccessible to proof by contemporaneous mathematicians, seen as virtually impossible to prove using current knowledge. Wiles first announced his proof on Wednesday June 23, 1993 at a lecture in Cambridge entitled "Elliptic Curves and Galois Representations." [1] However, the proof was found to contain an error in September of 1993. One year later, on Monday September 19, 1994, in what he would call "the most important moment of [his] working life," Wiles stumbled upon a revelation, "so indescribably beautiful... so simple and so elegant," that allowed him to correct the proof to the satisfaction of the mathematical community. The correct proof was published in May of 1995. The proof uses many techniques from algebraic geometry and number theory, and has many ramifications in these branches of mathematics. It also uses standard constructions of modern algebraic geometry, such as the category of schemes and Iwasawa theory, and other 20th-century techniques not available to Fermat.
Wikipedia
Wikipedia
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