The Abel prize, considered by all as the “Nobel of mathematics”, already has a new winner. The proof of Fermat’s last theorem, a problem that had been unsolved for more than three centuries, presented by the British Andrew J. Wiles in 1994, has been “impressive” for the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters, which each year awards this prestigious accolade of mathematics.
The theorem in question (for the equation xn + yn = zn it is impossible if n is an integer greater than 2 and the three letters are positive integers) was formulated in 1637 by the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat and, until now, was the most famous unsolved problem in the history of mathematics.
The institution has selected Wiles for his ” impressive proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem , using the modularity conjecture for semi-stable elliptic curves, which opened a new era in number theory.”
The conjecture was scrawled in the margin of a copy of Euclid’s Elements and to demonstrate it, Wiles started from an earlier finding that stated that if the so-called “Taniyama conjecture” – which states that every elliptic equation must be modular – was false , then Fermat’s theorem also had to be false. That is, starting from the proof of the “Taniyama conjecture”, it reached the resolution of the “last Fermat conjecture”.
This award, which was born in 2002 to mark the bicentennial of the birth of the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel, has previously awarded the experts in this field, Louis Nirenberg or the famous John Nash. The Abel Committee, made up of five internationally recognized mathematicians, is in charge of choosing the winner each year.
The Abel award is endowed with 600,000 euros.
