PlanetPhysics/Andrew John Wiles

Sir Andrew John Wiles
(born in 1953) is a British mathematician who proved Fermat's last theorem. It was Fermat's last theorem that inspired Wiles to go into mathematics at an early age.

Education
He studied at Oxford University, and later at the University of Cambridge, England. At present he is a professor at Princeton University.

Proof of Fermat's last theorem
After Kenneth Ribet suggested there might be a connection between the famous Fermat problem and the Taniyama-Shimura-Weil conjecture, Wiles decided to focus entirely on that connection. The preliminary attempt he made at a proof that he presented in 1993 was incomplete, but Wiles and his former student Richard Taylor were able to fill in the gaps of the proof. This was after Wiles turned 41, and thus he was no longer eligible for the fields medal, but he received several other awards and prizes in recognition, such as the Royal Medal and the Clay Research Award. He was knighted in 2000 by H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth II.

Subsequently, the Clay Mathematics Institute asked him to write the official problem description of the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture for the Millennium Problems.

(Initial entry was prepared by PrimeFan, with additions made by several co-authors; this is a further updated version with several significant changes).