Andrew Wiles

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.

I really believed that I was on the right track, but that did not mean that I would necessarily reach my goal.

There are proofs that date back to the Greeks that are still valid today.

But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library.

I loved doing problems in school. I'd take them home and make up new ones of my own. But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library. I was just browsing through the section of math books and I found this one book, which was all about one particular problem - Fermat's Last Theorem.

I realized that anything to do with Fermat's Last Theorem generates too much interest.

Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge.

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.

Perhaps the methods I needed to complete the proof would not be invented for a hundred years. So even if I was on the right track, I could be living in the wrong century.

Well, 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.

I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof.

There's also a sense of freedom. I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about if all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night, and that went on for eight years.