Writing his proof on the blackboard, Wiles was met at first with stunned silence and then thunderous applause from the 200 researchers who attended his lecture, IFLScience reports.
Now, more than 20 years after delivering his findings, Wiles has been awarded the prestigious Abel prize and received more than $700,000 for his efforts.
This theorem, proposed by Pierre de Fermat in 1637, became known as Fermat’s Last Theorem, and it states the following:
“an + bn = cn. This equation has no solution in integers for n≥3.”
What this means is that n can never be more than 2, IFLScience reports, in order for the equation to work. This might appear simple, but remember, this has eluded mathematicians for centuries.
CNN reports that when he learned about the award, Wiles told the Oxford University that this was a tremendous honor, “Fermat’s equation was my passion from an early age, and solving it gave me an overwhelming sense of fulfillment.”
The prize is frequently described as the Nobel of mathematics, and it was awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. An official ceremony featuring Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon will take place in May.
“Wiles is one of very few mathematicians — if not the only one — whose proof of a theorem has made international headline news,” the committee said. “In 1994 he cracked Fermat’s Last Theorem, which at the time was the most famous, and long-running, unsolved problem in the subject’s history.”
Wiles, 62, first became intrigued by Fermat’s Last Theorem when he was just 10 years old, having stumbled upon it in E.T. Bell’s The Last Problem at his local library in Cambridge, Tech Times reports.
The theorem is the most popular problem in mathematics, but he was unaware of that at the time.
It was amazing to him that there were some unsolved problems that a child could understand and even try to solve. He kept at it through his teen years, and thought he had a proof of the theorem when he went to college, “but it turned out to be wrong.”
Fermat himself claimed he had proved the theorem, but he also said the margin of the book he was writing in was too narrow to elaborate. Over the centuries, the world’s scholars and mathematicians attempted time and again to solve the problem but were unable to.
As part of the faculty at Princeton University, Wiles, a number theorist, decided to try and solve the problem once again, and at the end of that is when he disclosed his proof in the lecture at Cambridge, Tech Times reports.
Then a mathematician found an error in his proof in 1994 and Wiles had to regroup. He vowed to fix the error.
So he called in a former student to help him, and after a year, the error was corrected and the revised proof was published.
Wiles solved the problem by combining three complex mathematical fields: modular forms, elliptic curves, and Galois representations.
“The truth is the methods I used were not any more sophisticated than I could certainly do as an undergraduate,” Wiles said.
But the situation was a huge pressure for this shy mathematician, and it nearly undid him.
“It was very, very intense,” he said. “Unfortunately as human beings we succeed by trial and error. It’s the people who overcome the setbacks who succeed.”
Proving the theorem took the weight off his mind, and the work is considered a landmark in the development of mathematics, IFLScience reports. The Abel committee noted “few results have as rich a mathematical history and as dramatic a proof as Fermat’s Last Theorem.” The committee said Wiles’ work has opened a new era of number theory.
Wiles touched on the beauty of mathematics, noting that it “lures you back in.” He added that he hoped his solution of this centuries-old theorem would inspire young people to take an interest in mathematics to work on the challenges offered by this fascinating subject.
