The Shaw Prize 2005

The Shaw Prize in Mathematical Sciences 2005
Biographical Note of Shaw Laureate

Andrew Wiles (b. 1953) is a professor at Princeton University. He earned his B.A. from Oxford University (1974) and Ph.D. from Cambridge University, UK (1979). Following in the footsteps of his father, Professor Wiles went on to become an assistant professor at Harvard University. In 1982 he became a lecturer at the Institute for Advanced Studies and professor of mathematics at Princeton. In 1994 Professor Wiles was appointed Eugene Higgins Professor of Mathematics at Princeton.

He astonished the world's mathematical community in 1994 when he unveiled his solution to Fermat's Last Theorem. In 1996 he was awarded the Common Wealth Award for Science and Invention, and elected as a foreign member to the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.

Research Contributions - Fermat's Last Theorem
The equation
x**2 + y**2 = z**2
has infinitely many solutions for which x, y and z are positive integers. The smallest such solution is
3**2 + 4**2 = 5**2
which has been known since antiquity. In 1630 Fermat (1601-1665) conjectured that the more general equation
x**n + y**n = z**n, for n = integer > 2,
has no integer solutions. This was later called Fermat's last theorem. It remained the most famous unproven conjecture in mathematics for more than three centuries until 1994 when Wiles completed his long and difficult proof, which uses powerful mathematical ideas and insights developed in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Being a scientist is dull in appearance sometimes but it charms in intelligence. They bring life into advance benefiting human being in many countless days and nights working hard alone. They are nameless benefactor to all of us.