Andrew Wiles

Andrew Wiles

Andrew Wiles is the chair of the mathematics department at Princeton University[1]. Professor Wiles will make a permanent move to Oxford University in 2011 to assume a Royal Society Professorship. He is famous for his non-elementary proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, for which he was knighted in the UK.

Wiles took seven years to develop his proof. His initial proof of June 23, 1993 was full of many new ideas developing the work of many modern mathematicians, but it was soon found to contain an error. In part, it involved proving the Taniyama–Shimura conjecture. Oh September 19, 1994 Wiles had the insight that using the Flach approach and he returned to Iwasawa theory, which led to a Class Number Formula (CNF) that was valid for all needed cases. He published a modified proof in May 1995 and this has been accepted as valid.