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
Andrew Wiles's father was Maurice Frank Wiles (1923-2005), the Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford[2] and his mother Patricia Wiles (née Mowll). His father worked as the Chaplain at the Ridley Hall, Cambridge, for the years 1952-55.
Andrew Wiles was born in Cambridge, England, in 1953, and he attended the King's College School, Cambridge, (where his mathematics teacher, David Higginbotham, first introduced Fermat's Last Theorem to him) and The Leys School, Cambridge. Wiles earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1974 after his study at the Merton College, Oxford, and a Ph.D. in 1980, after his research at the Clare College, Cambridge.
After a stay at the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey in 1981, Wiles became a professor at Princeton University. In 1985-86, Wiles was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques near Paris and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. From 1988 to 1990, Wiles was a Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford, and then he 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 the rational numbers, and soon afterwards, he 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 mathematical experts. Wiles was interviewed for an episode of the British Broadcasting Company's documentary series Horizon that focused on Fermat's Last Theorem . This was renamed "The Proof", and it was made an episode of the Public Broadcasting Service's television science TV 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 United States National Academy of Sciences since 1996, (since he does remain a subject of the United Kingdom).[1]
[edit] Family
Wiles is married to Nada Canaan Wiles, who erned her Ph.D. in microbiology from Princeton University in New Jersey, and the two parents have three daughters and no sons. Their daughters are named Clare, Kate, and Olivia Wiles. [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] His Public Honors
- The asteroid 9999 Wiles was named for Wiles. (1999) [16]
- Wiles was appointed to the rank of Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the United Kingdom in 2000 A.D.[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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