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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.

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
Going
Science
Round
Mind
Around
Rounds
Would
Problem
Wake
Time
Firsts
Basically
Thinking
Without
Went
First
Head
Whole
Sleep
Distraction
Thing
Morning
Carried

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But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library.
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The only way I could relax was when I was with my children.
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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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Always try the problem that matters most to you.
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I never use a computer.
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That particular odyssey is now over. My mind is now at rest.
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I loved doing problems in school.
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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 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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Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one.
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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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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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The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis.
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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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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.
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Fermat said he had a proof.
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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.
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There are proofs that date back to the Greeks that are still valid today.
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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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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.
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