PAA British professor has won £500,000 after he solved a maths equation that has baffled mathematicians for centuries.
Fermat’s Last Theorem was posed by French mathematician Pierre de Fermat in 1637 and it remained unsolved for over 350 years, reports CNN.
Oxford UniversityThis is it:
There are no whole number solutions to the equation xn+ yn = zn when n is greater than 2.
I know, where do you even start?
But in 1994 Oxford professor Andrew Wiles finally got his head round the problem after spending seven years intensively working on a solution at Princeton University.
PixabayBut it wasn’t until this week that Prof Wiles was finally awarded the prestigious 2016 Abel Prize – often described as the ‘Nobel of Mathematics’ – by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.
The Abel Committee said:
He cracked the most famous unsolved problem in the subject’s history.
Wiles is one of very few mathematicians whose proof of a theorem has made international headline news.
PinterestThe 62-year-old professor first became fascinated with the equation when he was just 10-years-old after he found a copy of it at his local library.
“I knew from that moment that I would never let it go,” he said. “I had to solve it.”
Life Goals – 1: Maths – 0. Our sincerest congratulations Professor!
