Perhaps I could best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of entering a dark mansion. You go into the first room and it's dark, completely dark. You stumble around, bumping into the furniture. Gradually, you learn where each piece of furniture is. And finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch and turn it on. Suddenly, it's all illuminated and you can see exactly where you were. Then you enter the next dark room.

Andrew Wiles

Categorized in : Dark Light Pieces

Always try the problem that matters most to you.

Andrew Wiles

issues important motivational

I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.

Andrew Wiles

childhood adults dream

Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they know there are no solutions up to four million or four billion, they really want to know that there are no solutions up to infinity.

Andrew Wiles

four infinity want

The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.

Andrew Wiles

definitions sensual science

The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis.

Andrew Wiles

hypothesis mathematician problem

However impenetrable it seems, if you don't try it, then you can never do it.

Andrew Wiles

ifs seems trying

Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one.

Andrew Wiles

idaho solutions mean

I never use a computer.

Andrew Wiles

mathematics computer use

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.

Andrew Wiles

privilege adults mean

I carried this problem around in my head basically the whole time. I would wake up with it first thing in the morning, I would be thinking about it all day, and I would be thinking about it when I went to sleep. Without distraction I would have the same thing going round and round in my mind.

Andrew Wiles

sleep morning science

Fermat said he had a proof.

Andrew Wiles

proof said

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

Andrew Wiles

challenges trying love

Then when I reached college, I realized that many people had thought about the problem during the 18th and 19th centuries and so I studied those methods.

Andrew Wiles

umpires college people

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. There's no reason why these problems shouldn't be easy, and yet they turn out to be extremely intricate. Fermat's Last Theorem is the most beautiful example of this.

Andrew Wiles

simple beautiful years

I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about it all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night - and that went on for eight years.

Andrew Wiles

sleep morning night

Mathematics... is a bit like discovering oil. ... But mathematics has one great advantage over oil, in that no one has yet ... found a way that you can keep using the same oil forever.

Andrew Wiles

oil forever science

We've lost something that's been with us for so long, and something that drew a lot of us into mathematics. But perhaps that's always the way with math problems, and we just have to find new ones to capture our attention.

Andrew Wiles

math attention long

I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.

Andrew Wiles

childhood england love

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.

Andrew Wiles

understanding problem thinking

I loved doing problems in school.

Andrew Wiles

problems-in-school problem school