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. ”