- A British mathematician has been awarded for solving a 300-year-old math problem
- Andrew Wiles solved the problem for seven years using three complex mathematical fields
- He was awarded the 2016 Abel Prize by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
What is xn + yn = zn when n is greater than 2? For centuries, solving this problem has been a mystery even to mathematicians themselves – except for one British professor.
Andrew Wiles, a professor from Oxford, has been fascinated with solving the mathematical equation since he was a 10-year-old kid. But in 1994, he finally cracked the answer to the 300-year-old question first posed by Pierre de Fermat in 1637.
“I knew from that moment that I would never let it go… I had to solve it.” he said in a CNN feature.
According to the feature story, Wiles spent seven years in solving the problem using three different fields of mathematics: modular forms, elliptic curves and Galois representations.
Because of this Wiles was awarded the 2016 Abel Prize granted by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The award is equivalent to a Nobel prize in Mathematics.
“I was very lucky that not only did I solve the problem, but I opened the door for a whole new era in my field,” Wiles said; noting that seemingly impossible problems are now solvable.
“It has always been my hope that my solution of this age-old problem would inspire many young people to take up mathematics and to work on the many challenges of this beautiful and fascinating subject,” he also said.
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