Quote #7

I really believed that I was on the right track, but that did not mean that I would necessarily reach my goal.

More from Andrew Wiles

  1. I realized that anything to do with Fermat's Last Theorem generates too much interest.
  2. Young children simply aren't interested in Fermat. They just want to hear a story and they're not going to let you do anything else.
  3. Here was a problem, that I, a ten year old, could understand and I knew from that moment that I would never let it go. I had to solve it.
  4. Fermat couldn't possibly have had this proof.
  5. But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library. I was just browsing through the section of math books and I found th…
  6. I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof.
  7. I loved doing problems in school. I'd take them home and make up new ones of my own.
  8. But what has made this problem special for amateurs is that there's a tiny possibility that there does exist an elegant 17th-century proof.

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