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Andrew Wiles

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the French mathematician, see Andr Weil.


Andrew Wiles

Wiles at the 61st Birthday conference for P. Deligne (Institute for Advanced Study, 2005).

Born

11 April 1953 (age 60)


Cambridge, England

Nationality

British

Fields

Mathematics

Institutions

University of Oxford
Princeton University

Alma mater

University of Oxford
University of Cambridge

Thesis

Reciprocity Laws and the Conjecture of Birch and SwinnertonDyer (1979)

Doctoral advisor

John Coates

Doctoral students

Manjul Bhargava
Brian Conrad
Fred Diamond
Karl Rubin
Christopher Skinner
Richard Taylor

Known for

Proving the TaniyamaShimura Conjecture for semistable elliptic


curves, thereby proving Fermat's Last Theorem
Proving the main conjecture of Iwasawa theory

Notable awards

Fermat Prize (1995)


Wolf Prize (1995/6)
Royal Medal (1996)
IMU Silver Plaque (1998)
King Faisal International Prize in Science (1998)
Shaw Prize (2005)

Sir Andrew John Wiles, KBE, FRS (born 11 April 1953)[1] 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.
Contents
[hide]

1 Early life and education

2 Mathematical career

3 The proof of Fermat's Last Theorem

4 Recognition by the media

5 Awards

6 Public honours

7 In popular culture

8 Notes

9 External links

Early life and education [edit]


Wiles is the son of Maurice Frank Wiles (19232005), the Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of
Oxford[2] and Patricia Wiles (ne Mowll). His father worked as the Chaplain at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, for the
years 195255. 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. [3] 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.

Mathematical career [edit]


Wiles 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 a stay at the Institute for Advanced
Study in New Jersey in 1981, Wiles became a professor at Princeton University. In 198586, 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.
Wiles's graduate research was guided by John Coates beginning in the summer of 1975. Together these
colleagues worked on the arithmetic ofelliptic 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.

The proof of Fermat's Last Theorem [edit]


Main article: Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
Starting in the summer of 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 "Taniyama

Shimura-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.[4]:203-205, 223, 226 For example, Wiles' ex-supervisor John Coates states that it seemed
"impossible to actually prove",[4]:226 and Ken Ribet considered himself "one of the vast majority of people who
believed [it] was completely inaccessible", adding that "Andrew Wiles was probably one of the few people on
earth who had the audacity to dream that you can actually go and prove [it]."

[4]:223

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 - as the conjecture itself was
also a professionally "worthwhile" and significant research area. [4]:226 He dedicated all of his research time to
this problem for over 6 years in near-total secrecy, covering up his efforts by releasing prior work in small
segments as separate papers and confiding only in his wife. [4]:229-230 In 1993, he presented his proof to the public
for the first time at a conference in Cambridge.[5] In August 1993 it turned out 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.

Recognition by the media [edit]


His proof of Fermat's Last Theorem has stood up to the scrutiny 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 Service's science
television series Nova.[6] He has been a foreign member of theU.S. National Academy of Sciences since 1996.
He remains a citizen of the United Kingdom.[1]

Awards [edit]
Wiles has been awarded several major prizes in mathematics and science:

Junior Whitehead Prize of the LMS (1988)[1]

Fellow of the Royal Society (1989)[1]

Schock Prize (1995)

Fermat Prize (1995)

Wolf Prize (1995/6)

NAS Award in Mathematics from the National Academy of Sciences (1996)[7][8]

Royal Medal (1996)

Ostrowski Prize (1996)[9][10]

Cole Prize (1997)[11]

Wolfskehl Prize (1997)[12] see Paul Wolfskehl

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)[13][14]

King Faisal Prize (1998)[15]

Clay Research Award (1999)

Pythagoras Award (Croton, 2004)[16]

Shaw Prize (2005)[17]

Public honours [edit]

The asteroid 9999 Wiles was named for Wiles in 1999.[18]

Wiles was appointed to the rank of Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the United
Kingdom in 2000

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