Andrew Wiles
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| Sir Andrew Wiles | |
 Sir Andrew John Wiles
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| Born | 11 April 1953 Cambridge, England |
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| Residence | United Kingdom United States |
| Nationality | British |
| Fields | Mathematics |
| Institutions | Princeton University |
| Alma mater | Oxford University Cambridge University |
| Doctoral advisor | John Coates |
| Doctoral students | Manjul Bhargava Brian Conrad Karl Rubin Chris Skinner Richard Taylor |
| Known for | Proving Fermat's Last Theorem |
| Notable awards | Fermat Prize (1995) Wolf Prize (1995/6) Royal Medal (1996) IMU Silver Plaque (1998) Shaw Prize (2005) |
Sir Andrew John Wiles KBE FRS (born 11 April 1953)[1] is a British mathematician and a professor at Princeton University, specialising in number theory. He is most famous for proving Fermat's Last Theorem.
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[edit] Early life and education
Wiles's father is Maurice Frank Wiles (1923-2005), Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford[2] and his mother Patricia Wiles (née Mowll). His father worked as Chaplain at Ridley Hall, Cambridge for the period 1952-55.
Andrew Wiles was born in Cambridge, England in 1953 and attended King's College School, Cambridge (where his mathematics teacher, David Higginbotham first introduced Fermat's Last Theorem to him) and The Leys School, Cambridge; and earned his BA degree in maths in 1974 after study at Merton College, Oxford, and a Ph.D. in 1980 after research at Clare College, Cambridge.
After a stay at the Institute for Advanced Study in 1981 he became a professor at Princeton University. In 1985-6 he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques south of Paris and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. From 1988 to 1990 he was a Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford and then returned to Princeton.
[edit] Mathematical career
Wiles's graduate research was guided by John Coates beginning in the summer of 1975. Together they worked on the arithmetic of elliptic curves with complex multiplication by the methods of Iwasawa theory. He further worked with Barry Mazur on the main conjecture of Iwasawa theory over Q and soon afterwards generalized this result to totally real fields.
Starting in the summer of 1986, based on successive progress of the previous few years of Gerhard Frey, Jean-Pierre Serre and Ken Ribet, Wiles realised that a proof of a limited form of the modularity theorem might then be in reach. He dedicated all of his research time to this problem in relative secrecy. By 1995, he had released a surprisingly lengthy proof of Fermat's Last Theorem that has stood up to the scrutiny of the world's experts. Wiles was interviewed for an episode of BBC's documentary series Horizon that focused on Fermat's Last Theorem . This was renamed "The Proof" and made an episode of the PBS television science series Nova. [3]. Since 1994 he has been Eugene Higgins Professor at Princeton and is currently Chair of the Mathematics Department.[4][5]. He is a Foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences since 1996 (as he remains a British citizen).[1]
[edit] Family
Wiles is married to Nada Canaan Wiles, who has a PhD in microbiology from Princeton, and they have three daughters: Clare, Kate and Olivia. [1].
[edit] Awards
Wiles has been awarded several major prizes in mathematics and science
- Junior Whitehead Prize of the LMS, (1988)[1]
- Fellow of the Royal Society (1989)[1]
- Schock Prize (1995)
- Fermat Prize (1995)
- Wolf Prize (1995/6)
- National Academy of Sciences Award in Mathematics from the American Mathematical Society (1996)[6]
- Royal Medal (1996)
- Ostrowski Prize (1996)[7] [8]
- Cole Prize (1997) [9]
- Wolfskehl Prize (1997)[10] - see Paul Wolfskehl
- A silver plaque from the International Mathematical Union (1998) recognizing his achievements, in place of the Fields Medal, which is restricted to those under 40 (Wiles was born in 1953 and proved the theorem in 1994).[11][12]
- King Faisal Prize (1998)[13]
- Clay Research Award (1999)
- Shaw Prize (2005)[14]
- Pythagoras Award[15] (Croton, 2004)
[edit] Honours
- The asteroid 9999 Wiles was named for him. (1999) [16]
- Named Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (2000).[17]
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b c d e "WILES, Sir Andrew (John)", Who's Who, A & C Black, January 2007
- ^ WILES, Rev. Prof. Maurice Frank, Who Was Who, A & C Black, January 2007
- ^ "NOVA Online: The Proof". WGBH. 1997. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/. Retrieved on 2006-05-03.
- ^ "Mathematics Department, Princeton University". http://www.math.princeton.edu/. Retrieved on 2008-04-19.
- ^ Andrew J. Wiles
- ^ Wiles Receives NAS Award in Mathematics July 1996
- ^ Wiles Receives Ostrowski Prize June 1996
- ^ Correction 1998
- ^ "1997 Cole Prize, Notices of the AMS" (PDF). http://www.ams.org/notices/199703/comm-cole.pdf. Retrieved on 2008-04-13.
- ^ Paul Wolfskehl and the Wolfskehl Prize October 1997
- ^ Andrew J. Wiles Awarded the "IMU Silver Plaque"
- ^ Andrew Wiles receives special tribute August 28, 1998
- ^ Andrew Wiles Receives Faisal Prize
- ^ Wiles Receives 2005 Shaw Prize September 2005
- ^ Premio Pitagora
- ^ "JPL Small-Body Database Browser". http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=9999+Wiles. Retrieved on 2009-05-11.
- ^ London Gazette: (Supplement) no. 55710, p. 34, 31 December 1999.
[edit] External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Andrew Wiles |
- Andrew Wiles at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
- O'Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Andrew Wiles", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive.
- Andrew Wiles' bibliography
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