Not from me, but from my dad who knew Wiles when they were both young mathematicians.
My dad says the implication of the article, that Wiles become very smart at 40, is bogus. Everyone, even when Wiles was 20, spoke of how he was very smart and "one to watch for." That he was doing super-important work back then.
In other words, it is not that Wiles became suddenly smart... it is that he suddenly became a celebrity at 40. His past work was impressive, too, but in reality the public has no chance of understanding his past theorems, let alone their proofs.
The other part, he says, is that a young graduate student can not take a nebulous task like "Fermat's last theorem"; you would never graduate, never publish. It's a post-tenure job, when you can deveote your energies as you please. In that context, 40 is the appropriate age to be solving something as large as this.
I think it's funny to see Microsoft Slashdotted.
Wouldn't it be a great 'proof by contradiction'
to see Microsoft's "NT is better than Linux" to go down as they are overloaded with a swarm of
slashdotters?
Slashdot Mirror
Not from me, but from my dad who knew Wiles when they were both young mathematicians.
My dad says the implication of the article, that Wiles become very smart at 40, is bogus. Everyone, even when Wiles was 20, spoke of how he was very smart and "one to watch for." That he was doing super-important work back then.
In other words, it is not that Wiles became suddenly smart... it is that he suddenly became a celebrity at 40. His past work was impressive, too, but in reality the public has no chance of understanding his past theorems, let alone their proofs.
The other part, he says, is that a young graduate student can not take a nebulous task like "Fermat's last theorem"; you would never graduate, never publish. It's a post-tenure job, when you can deveote your energies as you please. In that context, 40 is the appropriate age to be solving something as large as this.
I think it's funny to see Microsoft Slashdotted. Wouldn't it be a great 'proof by contradiction' to see Microsoft's "NT is better than Linux" to go down as they are overloaded with a swarm of slashdotters?