Sir Andrew Wiles: British professor awarded Abel Prize for solving problem that baffled experts for three centuries. Sir Andrew’s discovery described as ‘an epochal moment for mathematics’. 

• A British mathematician has been awarded one of the discipline’s top prizes for solving a problem that baffled experts for three centuries.
• Sir Andrew Wiles, 62, has been awarded the Abel Prize – and almost half a million pounds – by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters for his proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem.
• Cambridge-born Sir Andrew made his breakthrough in 1994 while working at Princeton.
  

  Sir Andrew Wiles

• Formulated by the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat in 1637, the theorem states: There are no whole number solutions to the equation x^n + y^n = z^n when n is greater than 2.
• He will pick up the award – described as the equivalent of a Nobel prize for maths – and six million Norwegian krone (£495,000) from Crown Prince Haakon in May, for an achievement that the academy described as “an epochal moment for mathematics”.
• The academy said Sir Andrew was awarded the prize “for his stunning proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem by way of the modularity conjecture for semistable elliptic curves, opening a new era in number theory”.