Famous quotes by Mathematicians

"Just because we can't find a solution, it doesn't mean that there isn't one"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"It's fine to work on any problem, so long as it generates interesting mathematics along the way - even if you don't solve it at the end of the day"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"It could be that the methods needed to take the next step may simply be beyond present day mathematics. Perhaps the methods I needed to complete the proof would not be invented for a hundred years"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"I'm sure that some of them will be very hard and I'll have a sense of achievement again, but nothing will mean the same to me - there's no other problem in mathematics that could hold me the way that this one did"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about it all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night - and that went on for eight years"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

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

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"I realized that anything to do with Fermat's Last Theorem generates too much interest"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"I loved doing problems in school"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"I know it's a rare privilege, but if one can really tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it's more rewarding than anything I can imagine"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"I hope that seeing the excitement of solving this problem will make young mathematicians realize that there are lots and lots of other problems in mathematics which are going to be just as challenging in the future"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"However, impenetrable it seems, if you don't try it, then you can never do it"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"Fermat said he had a proof"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"Always try the problem that matters most to you"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"Well, 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"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"We've lost something that's been with us for so long, and something that drew a lot of us into mathematics. But perhaps that's always the way with math problems, and we just have to find new ones to capture our attention"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"There's also a sense of freedom. I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about if all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night, and that went on for eight years"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"There are proofs that date back to the Greeks that are still valid today"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"Then, when I reached college, I realized that many people had thought about the problem during the 18th and 19th centuries, and so I studied those methods"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"The only way I could relax was when I was with my children"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates, rather than the problem itself"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"That particular odyssey is now over. My mind is now at rest"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge"

Andrew Wiles, Mathematician

"The theory has to be interpreted that extra dimensions beyond the ordinary four dimensions, the three spatial dimensions plus time, are sufficiently small that they haven't been observed yet"

Edward Witten, Mathematician

"You have that one basic string, but it can vibrate in many ways. But we're trying to get a lot of particles because experimental physicists have discovered a lot of particles"

Edward Witten, Mathematician

"In Einstein's general relativity the structure of space can change but not its topology. Topology is the property of something that doesn't change when you bend it or stretch it as long as you don't break anything"

Edward Witten, Mathematician

"As for the forces, electromagnetism and gravity, we experience in everyday life. But the weak and strong forces are beyond our ordinary experience. So in physics, lots of the basic building blocks take 20th- or perhaps 21st-century equipment to explore"

Edward Witten, Mathematician

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