Andrew Wiles on the struggle and beauty of mathematics

Some of my favorite quotes related:

    "As Wiles began his lectures, there was more and more speculation 
    about what it was going to be," Dr. Ribet said.
    ... Finally, at the end of his third lecture, Dr. Wiles concluded
    that he had proved a general case of the Taniyama conjecture.
    Then, seemingly as an afterthought,
    he noted that that meant that Fermat's last theorem was true. Q.E.D. [1]

And

    "I had to give the next lecture," Dr. Ribet said.
    "It was something incredibly mundane."
    Since mathematicians are "a pretty well-behaved
    bunch," they listened politely.
    But, he said, it was hard to concentrate.
    "Most people in the room, including me, were incredibly shell-shocked," [1]

Very funny, but also gives me goosebumps. That would have been some lecture!

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/24/us/at-last-shout-of-eureka...

I think true happiness often can really only come from developing a skill; to be an old school artisan is the way forth.

This is an idea I'd dismissed at first, 'work is worship' and all that jazz, as some propaganda by the classes incl. and above the bourgeoisie.

I then the same illustrated by Alan Watts, and illustrated beautifully some months back in Oatmeal.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/unhappy

... and then I realized both were true. Words are both the instruments of the savior and the devil.

The night Wiles did the fermat reveal I took a call from a Canadian mathematician friend working the (internet, phone) tree to get the word out. I found myself, no mathematican, ringing the ABC australia science desk, asking for, and getting connected to Robin Williams (one of our formost science journalists) to try and encourage him to go with the story on the national news. Quite an engaging moment for me: in my domain of computer science we'd call what I did almost a social engineering attack: "I have important scienting news, put me through to your chief scienting reporter..." and it worked!

A beautiful and touching documentary about Fermat's last theorem, Wiles, and the other mathematicians involved in its proof: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x223gx8

I remember trying to "prove" Fermat's last theorem while at school (I was around 16 at the time and obviously somewhat naive). The equation itself looked so simple that I was convinced a proof would be equally as concise. After a few failed attempts, I googled for solutions and stumbled up on Andrew Wiles' proof. I was dumbfounded at its complexity! There is still a part of me that hopes/believes that there exists some undiscovered crafty little mathematical trick that can distill this monster proof into something simple!

I'm still intrigued by the possibility of a more "elegant" solution to Fermat being out there. Wiles approach seems like brute forcing it by stitching together different proofs. It seems very implausible that Fermat actually had an actual solution, but it should be possible that one exists.

I guess the incentive to find it is much less now though when the theorem has been proved.