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It's fine to work on any problem, so long as it generates interesting mathematics along the way - even if you don't solve it at the end of the day.

Andrew Wiles

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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
Fine
Interesting
Ends
Problem
Even
Generates
Work
Solve
Long
Mathematics
Way
Along

More quotes by Andrew Wiles

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Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.
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Fermat said he had a proof.
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I never use a computer.
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But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library.
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However impenetrable it seems, if you don't try it, then you can never do it.
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The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis.
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I loved doing problems in school.
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I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.
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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.
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I really believed that I was on the right track, but that did not mean that I would necessarily reach my goal
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The only way I could relax was when I was with my children.
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That particular odyssey is now over. My mind is now at rest.
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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.
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I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.
Andrew Wiles