Who solved fermats last theorem?
Fermat’s last theorem was officially solved on 27 June 1997 by Andrew Wiles, a Cambridge mathematician working at Princeton University in the USA. Wiles announced his proof on 23 June 1993 in a lecture at the Issac Newton Institute in Cambridge. He was then eligible for a prize bequeathed by a German industrialist called Wolfskehl in 1908, but his proof had to be verified by other mathematicians and then published. Unfortunately, there was a ‘blip’ in his proof and it took another 14 months of work to correct. By 25 October 1994 Wiles released two manuscripts on the new corrected proof. They were: ‘Modular elliptical curves and Fermat’s last theorem’ and (with Richard Taylor, ‘Ring theoretic properties of certain Hecke algebras.’ These were published in the Annals of Mathematics in May 1995. On 27 June 1997 Wiles was awarded the Wolfskehl prize ($50,000) and Fermat’s last theorem was officially announced as being solved.
