Andrew Wiles

Sir Andrew John Wiles, KBE, FRS (born 11 April 1953) is a British mathematician and a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in number theory. He is most notable for proving Fermat's Last Theorem.

Early life

Wiles was born in 1953 in Cambridge, England, the son of Maurice Frank Wiles (1923–2005), the Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, and Patricia Wiles (née Mowll). His father worked as the Chaplain at Ridley Hall, Cambridge, for the years 1952–55. Wiles attended King's College School, Cambridge, and The Leys School, Cambridge.

Wiles states that he came across Fermat's Last Theorem on his way home from school when he was 10 years old. He stopped by his local library where he found a book about the theorem. Fascinated by the existence of a theorem that was so easy to state that he, a ten-year-old, could understand it, but nobody had proven it, he decided to be the first person to prove it. However, he soon realised that his knowledge was too limited, so he abandoned his childhood dream, until it was brought back to his attention at the age of 33 by Ken Ribet's 1986 proof of the epsilon conjecture, which Gerhard Frey had previously linked to Fermat's famous equation.

The Laboratory

"The Laboratory" is a poem and dramatic monologue by Robert Browning. The poem was first published in June 1844 in Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany, and later Dramatic Romances and Lyrics in 1845.

This poem, set in seventeenth century France, is the monologue of a woman speaking to an apothecary as he prepares a poison, which she intends to use to kill her rival in love. It was inspired by the life of Marie Madeleine Marguerite D'Aubray, marquise de Brinvilliers (1630-1676), who poisoned her father and two brothers and planned to poison her husband.

The Poem