Sir Andrew Wiles, 62, (pictured) has been awarded the Abel Prize by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters
Photo: PA
Sir Andrew Wiles, 62, (pictured) has been awarded the Abel Prize by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters

    British mathematician published the solution to numerical problem in 1994.  Sir Andrew Wiles has been awarded the Abel Prize for the proof
   Fermat's Last Theorem had baffled mathematicians for 300 years




Scroll down for story .....

   - He will pick up the award from Crown Prince Haakon of Norway in May
It's a mathematical problem that had bamboozled the best brains for three centuries.

Now a British mathematician has been recognised with one of the discipline's top prizes for solving Fermat's Last Theorem back in 1994.
The award comes with a cool six million Norwegian Krone (£495,000) proving that being good at maths certainly pays.
Sir Andrew Wiles, 62 has been awarded the Abel Prize by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for an achievement that academy described as 'an epochal moment for mathematics'.
He will pick up the award and cheque from Crown Prince Haakon of Norway in Oslo in May.




Sir Andrew, currently a professor at Oxford University's Mathematical Institute, said: 'It is a tremendous honour to receive the Abel Prize and to join the previous laureates who have made such outstanding contributions to the field.
'Fermat's equation was my passion from an early age, and solving it gave me an overwhelming sense of fulfillment.
'It has always been my hope that my solution of this age-old problem would inspire many young people to take up mathematics and to work on the many challenges of this beautiful and fascinating subject.'
The academy said Sir Andrew was awarded the prize 'for his stunning proof of Fermat's Last Theorem by way of the modularity conjecture for semistable elliptic curves, opening a new era in number theory.'
Cambridge-born Sir Andrew made his breakthrough in 1994, while working at Princeton, and he published the proof one year later.
First formulated by the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat in 1637, the theorem states: There are no whole number solutions to the equation xn + yn = zn when n is greater than 2.




Sir Andrew (pictured) currently a professor at Oxford University, said: 'It is a tremendous honour to receive the Abel Prize and to join the previous laureates who have made such outstanding contributions to the field'
Photo: PA
Sir Andrew (pictured) currently a professor at Oxford University, said: 'It is a tremendous honour to receive the Abel Prize and to join the previous laureates who have made such outstanding contributions to the field'
Sir Andrew used many 20th-century techniques not available to Fermat - from number theory and algebraic geometry such as the category of schemes and Iwasawa theory - to come up with the proof.
It is over 150 pages long and consumed seven years of the mathematician's research time.
Sir Andrew has previously described  Monday 19 September 1994, when he found the solution to the numerical conundrum, as 'the most important moment of [his] working life.'




He said he found a solution 'so indescribably beautiful... so simple and so elegant' to conclude his work. 
His previous accolades include the Rolf Schock Prize, the Ostrowski Prize, the Wolf Prize, the Royal Medal of the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Science's Award in Mathematics, and the Shaw Prize. He was knighted in 2000.
In its announcement of the award, Academy said: 'Andrew J Wiles is one of very few mathematicians - if not the only one - whose proof of a theorem has made international headline news.
The Abel Prize was jointly won last year by John F Nash Jr, the US mathematician and economist - who was the subject of the 2001 movie A Beautiful Mind (Russell Crowe is pictured playing the genius) - and Canadian-born mathematician Louis Nirenberg
The Abel Prize was jointly won last year by John F Nash Jr, the US mathematician and economist - who was the subject of the 2001 movie A Beautiful Mind (Russell Crowe is pictured playing the genius) - and Canadian-born mathematician Louis Nirenberg




'In 1994 he cracked Fermat's Last Theorem which, at the time, was the most famous and long-running unsolved problem in the subject's history.
'Wiles' proof was not only the high point of his career - and an epochal moment for mathematics - but also the culmination of a remarkable personal journey that began three decades earlier.'
The Abel Prize was created in 2002 and is named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel, who died in 1829.
Awarded annually, it was jointly won last year by John F Nash Jr, the US mathematician and economist - who was the subject of the 2001 movie A Beautiful Mind - and Canadian-born mathematician Louis Nirenberg.
Previous British winners include Edinburgh University academic Sir Michael Atiyah who shared the prize in 2004 with American Isadore Singer for their work on what is known as the Atiyah-Singer theorem.  




NIGERIAN PROFESSOR CLAIMS TO HAVE SOLVED THE RIEMANN PROBLEM

Last year, a Nigerian professor claimed to have solved one of the most important problems in mathematics - the Riemann Hypothesis.
Dr Opeyemi Enoch said he made a a key breakthrough in 2010 which later enabled him to solve the puzzle, which is one of the seven Millennium Problems in Mathematics.
However, this has not been formerly confirmed and the problem is officially 'unsolved'.
These seven puzzles were set by The Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000 with a prize of $1 million (£658,000) prize for every provblem prooved.
The Riemann Hypothesis was proposed by mathematician Bernard Riemann in 1859 and concerns the distribution of prime numbers.
Last year, Nigerian professor Dr Opeyemi Enoch (pictured) claimed to have solved one of the most important problems in mathematics - the Riemann Hypothesis
Last year, Nigerian professor Dr Opeyemi Enoch (pictured) claimed to have solved one of the most important problems in mathematics - the Riemann Hypothesis
The hypothesis asserts that all solutions of the equation ζ(s) = 0 lies on a certain vertical straight line, according to the Clay Mathematics Institute.
But a proof, which Dr Enoch is says he has, is needed to explain the distribution beyond the first 10,000,000,000 solutions.
Dr Enoch, who teaches at the Federal University of Oye Ekiti (FUOYE) in Nigeria, presented his proof on 11 November during the International Conference on Mathematics and Computer Science in Vienna, Nigerian news site Vanguard reported. 
A statement from the university said that having started investigating the problem, Dr Enoch 'went on to consider and to correct the misconceptions that were communicated by mathematicians in the past generations, thus paving way for his solutions and proofs to be established.
'He also showed how other problems of this kind can be formulated and obtained the matrix that Hilbert and Poly predicted will give these undiscovered solutions.
'He revealed how these solutions are applicable in cryptography, quantum information science and in quantum computers.'