Person: Wiles, Andrew John
Andrew Wiles is an English mathematician famous for having finally proved _Fermat's Last Theorem _ in 1995.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- When Andrew was born Maurice Wiles was Chaplain at Ridley Hall, Cambridge.
- Wiles' interest in Fermat's Last Theorem began at a young age.
- In 1971, Wiles entered Merton College, Oxford, graduating with a B.A. in 1974.
- Wiles did not work on Fermat's Last Theorem for his doctorate.
- From 1977 until 1980 Wiles was a Junior Research fellow at Clare College, Cambridge and also a Benjamin Peirce Assistant Professor at Harvard University.
- Wiles was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship which enabled him to visit the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifique in Paris and also the École Normale Supérieure in Paris during 1985-86.
- This result set the stage for Wiles's work.
- Wiles abandoned all his other research when he heard what had been proved and, for seven years, he concentrated solely on attempting to prove the Shimura-Taniyama conjecture, knowing that a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem then followed.
- In 1988 Wiles went to Oxford University where he spent two years as a Royal Society Research Professor.
- In 1993 Wiles told two other mathematicians that he was close to a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.
- In 1994 Wiles was appointed Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton.
- From 1995 Wiles began to receive many honours for this outstanding piece of work.
- In addition to the prizes and awards mentioned above, Wiles has continued to receive many honours for his outstanding work.
- In the same year he was honoured by having "asteroid 9999 Wiles" named after him.
- In 2000, Andrew Wiles became "Sir Andrew Wiles" when he was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by the Queen.
- He received the Pythagoras Award in Crotone, Italy, in 2004 and, in the following year, Wiles received the Shaw Prize.
Born 11 April 1953, Cambridge, England.
View full biography at MacTutor
Tags relevant for this person:
Prize Abel, Prize Clay Research Award, Origin England, Number Theory, Prize Shaw, Prize Wolf
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
