Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Andrew Wiles
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: April 11
Mathematician
University Teacher
Sir Andrew John Wiles
Andrew John Wiles
Andrew J. Wiles
Dr. Andrew Wiles
Prof. Sir Andrew Wiles FRS
Night
Problem
Woke
Years
Obsessed
Time
Eight
Thinking
Went
Sleep
Morning

More quotes by Andrew Wiles

Image
The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis.
Andrew Wiles
Image
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
Image
But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library.
Andrew Wiles
Image
I never use a computer.
Andrew Wiles
Image
There are proofs that date back to the Greeks that are still valid today.
Andrew Wiles
Image
I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.
Andrew Wiles
Image
I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.
Andrew Wiles
Image
I loved doing problems in school.
Andrew Wiles
Image
Mathematics... is a bit like discovering oil. ... But mathematics has one great advantage over oil, in that no one has yet ... found a way that you can keep using the same oil forever.
Andrew Wiles
Image
The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.
Andrew Wiles
Image
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
Image
Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge.
Andrew Wiles
Image
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
Image
That particular odyssey is now over. My mind is now at rest.
Andrew Wiles
Image
I carried this problem around in my head basically the whole time. I would wake up with it first thing in the morning, I would be thinking about it all day, and I would be thinking about it when I went to sleep. Without distraction I would have the same thing going round and round in my mind.
Andrew Wiles
Image
The only way I could relax was when I was with my children.
Andrew Wiles
Image
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. Fermat's Last Theorem is the most beautiful example of this.
Andrew Wiles
Image
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
Image
Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one.
Andrew Wiles
Image
Fermat said he had a proof.
Andrew Wiles