Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Andrew Wiles

Quote by Andrew Wiles

“Some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve. There's no reason why these problems shouldn't be easy, and yet they turn out to be extremely intricate. Fermat's Last Theorem is the most beautiful example of this.”

Quote by Andrew Wiles

Create image

Author

Andrew Wiles
Andrew Wiles

Andrew Wiles is a renowned mathematician born on April 11, 1953 in the United Kingdom. He is best known for his contributions to number theory. Wiles gained international acclaim for his proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, a long-standing problem in the history of mathematics. more

You May Also Like

“Some persons have contended that mathematics ought to be taught by making the illustrations obvious to the senses. Nothing can be more absurd or injurious: it ought to be our never-ceasing effort to make people think, not feel.”

PeopleThinkingFeelsPersonsScienceEffortTaughtOughtMathematicsObviousSensesAbsurdIllustration
Book:Seven Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton: A List of All the Ms. Emendations in Mr. Collier's Folio, 1632
Create image

“The Mathematics are Friends to Religion, inasmuch as they charm the Passions, restrain the Impetuosity of the Imagination, and purge the Mind from Error and Prejudice. Vice is Error, Confusion, and false Reasoning; and all Truth is more or less opposite to it. Besides, Mathematical Studies may serve for a pleasant Entertainment for those Hours which young Men are apt to throw away upon their Vices; the Delightfulness of them being such as to make Solitude not only easy, but desirable.”

MenMindMayYoungScienceReligionPassionEasyHoursImaginationStudyTruth IsSolitudeOppositesPrejudiceMathematicsErrorsVicesEntertainmentConfusionMathematicalYoung ManPleasantReasoningCharmDesirable
Book:An Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning: In a Letter from a Gentleman in the City, to His Friend at Oxford
Create image

“The development of mathematics toward greater precision has led, as is well known, to the formalization of large tracts of it, so that one can prove any theorem using nothing but a few mechanical rules... One might therefore conjecture that these axioms and rules of inference are sufficient to decide any mathematical question that can at all be formally expressed in these systems. It will be shown below that this is not the case, that on the contrary there are in the two systems mentioned relatively simple problems in the theory of integers that cannot be decided on the basis of the axioms.”

WellsTwoProblemMightSimpleKnownCasesGreaterTheoryDevelopmentProveDecidedBasesMathematicsContraryMathematicalSufficientWell KnownPrecisionAxiomsTheoremsInferenceConjectureIntegers
Author:Kurt Gödel
Create image

“The mathematician's patterns, like the painter's or the poet's must be beautiful; the ideas, like the colours or the words must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.”

WorldWayFirstsIdeasTogetherBeautifulBeautyPoetFitTestsMathematicsPatternsUglyMathPainterMathematicalPermanentColourMathematicianHarmoniousPlaces In The WorldMath And ScienceMathematics And ScienceMath EducationMathematics By MathematiciansMathematical BeautyMath Is Like
Author:G. H. Hardy
Create image

“The mathematics clearly called for a set of underlying elementary objects-at that time we needed three types of them-elementary objects that could be combined three at a time in different ways to make all the heavy particles we knew. ... I needed a name for them and called them quarks, after the taunting cry of the gulls, "Three quarks for Muster mark," from Finnegan's Wake by the Irish writer James Joyce.”

WayDifferentScienceThreeNamesCryObjectsTypeNeededMarkMathematicsHeavyDifferent WaysParticlesJoyceMusterTauntingNomenclatureGullsIrish WritersQuarks
Author:Murray Gell-Mann
Create image