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Date: August 27, 1998
 

Andrew Wiles Receives Special Tribute from International Mathematical Union

Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem Merits First-Ever Silver Plaque

Princeton, N.J. -- Princeton Professor Andrew Wiles, who stunned mathematicians worldwide five years ago when he announced a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, received an unprecedented honor last week from the International Mathematical Union during the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin. The congress, held every four years, opened August 18 and concludes today.

Wiles was honored with a special silver plaque at the congress' opening ceremony, when the Fields Medal is awarded. The Fields, considered the highest honor in mathematics, is awarded only every four years and only to mathematicians age 40 or younger. (There is no Nobel Prize in mathematics.) Wiles, now 45, was just past 40 when he completed his final proof solving Fermat's problem; thus, the IMU found another way to honor his achievement.

This year's Fields Medallists are Richard Borcherds and Timothy Gowers of Cambridge University, Curtis McMullen of Harvard University and Maxim Kontsevich of the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques.

Also, on August 19 Wiles gave a lecture, Twenty Years of Number Theory, which received an ovation from the 1,500 conference attendees on hand; an estimated 700 more watched from an overflow site.

Wiles has received many accolades for his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, which baffled mathematicians for more than 350 years. Among the honors Wiles has received are the Wolf Prize and the MacArthur Fellowship, the so-called "genius award" granted to recipients in many disciplines.

In the late 1630s, a French mathematician named Pierre de Fermat wrote a note in a book regarding the statement: For each whole number n, greater than 2, the equation xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ has no solutions which are positive whole numbers. Then, Fermat wrote, "I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin in too narrow to contain."

Wiles himself first read about the theorem as a boy, and he spent a total of eight years in search of a proof. He first announced a solution on June 23, 1993, at the conclusion of a lecture at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, England. When mathematicians raised questions about his proof, Wiles himself noticed a flaw. That sent him back to work for nearly a year. Finally, in October 1994, Wiles unveiled his revised proof, which has been confirmed by experts in the field.
  

NOTE: "The Proof," the award-winning documentary that chronicles Andrew Wiles' path to a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem, will be rebroadcast on Nova, September 8 at 8 p.m. ET.