Sir Andrew John Wiles

Sir Andrew John Wiles was born in 11 April 1953 is a British mathematician and a
Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford University, specializing in number
theory. He is most notable for proving Fermat's Last Theorem.

1. Early life and education.

His parents are Maurice Frank Wiles (19232005), the Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of
Oxford and Patricia Wiles (ne Mowll). His father worked as the Chaplain at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, from
19521955. Wiles was born in Cambridge, England, in 1953, and he attended King's College School,
Cambridge, and The Leys School, Cambridge.
Wiles states that he came across Fermat's Last Theorem on his way home from school when he was 10
years old. He stopped by his local library where he found a book about the theorem. Fascinated by the
existence of a theorem that was so easy to state that he, a ten-year old, could understand it, but nobody
had proven it, he decided to be the first person to prove it. However, he soon realized that his knowledge
was too small, so he abandoned his childhood dream, until it was brought back to his attention at the age
of 33 by Ken Ribet's 1986 proof of the epsilon conjecture, which Gerhard Frey had previously linked to
Fermat's famous equation.

2. Mathematical career.
Earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1974 after his study at Merton College, Oxford, and a
Ph.D. in 1980, after his research at Clare College, Cambridge. After stay at the Institute for Advanced
Study in New Jersey in 1981, Wiles became a professor at Princeton University. In 19851986, Wiles was
a Guggenheim Fellow at the Institut des Hautes tudes Scientifiques near Paris and at the cole Normale
Suprieure. From 1988 to 1990, Wiles was a Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford University, and
then he returned to Princeton. He rejoined Oxford in 2011 as Royal Society Research Professor.
John Coates and Wiles worked on the arithmetic of elliptic curves with complex multiplication by the
methods of Iwasawa theory. He further worked with Barry Mazur on the main conjecture of Iwasawa
theory over the rational numbers, and soon afterward, he generalized this result to totally real fields.

3. Fermats Last Theorem.

In 1986, based on successive progress of the previous few years of Gerhard Frey, Jean-Pierre Serre and
Ken Ribet, it became clear that Fermat's Last Theorem could be proven as a corollary of a limited form of
the modularity theorem (unproven at the time and then known as the "TaniyamaShimura-Weil
conjecture"). The modularity theorem involved elliptic curves, which was also Wiles' own specialist area.
The conjecture was seen by contemporary mathematicians as important, but extraordinarily difficult or
perhaps inaccessible to proof. For example, Wiles' ex-supervisor John Coates states that it seemed
"impossible to actually prove, and Ken Ribet considered himself "one of the vast majority of people who
believed was completely inaccessible".
Despite this, Wiles, who had a childhood fascination with Fermat's Last Theorem, decided to undertake
the challenge of proving the conjecture at least to the extent needed for Frey's curve. He dedicated all of

his research time to this problem for over 6 years. In 1993, he presented his proof to the public for the
first time at a conference in Cambridge. In August 1993 it was discovered that the proof contained a flaw
in one area. Wiles tried and failed for over a year to repair his proof.
According to Wiles, the crucial idea for circumventing, rather than closing this area, came to him on 19
September 1994 when he was on the verge of giving up. Together with his former student Richard Taylor,
he published a second paper which circumvented the problem and thus completed the proof. Both papers
were published in 1995 in a special volume of the Annals of Mathematics.
His proof of Fermat's Last Theorem has stood up to the examination of the world's mathematical experts.
Wiles was interviewed for an episode of the BBC documentary series Horizon that focused on Fermat's
Last Theorem. This was renamed "The Proof", and it was made an episode of the Public Broadcasting
Servicee's science television series Nova. He has been a foreign member of the U.S. National Academy
of Sciences since 1996
4.

Awards

Wiles has been awarded several major prizes in mathematics and science:

Junior Whitehead Prize of the LMS (1988)

Fellow of the Royal Society (1989)

Schock Prize (1995)

Fermat Prize (1995)

Wolf Prize (1995/6)

A silver plaque from the International Mathematical Union (1998) recognizing his achievements,
in place of the Fields Medal, which is restricted to those under 40 (Wiles was born in 1953 and
proved the theorem in 1994
5.

Public Honour

The asteroid 9999 Wiles was named for Wiles in 1999.

The building at the University of Oxford housing the Mathematical Institute is named for Wiles

Rock band Bats have a song named after Wiles which describes his career.

Wiles and his achievement are also mentioned in Yoko Ogawa's novel The Housekeeper and the
Professor.