LITMIR.BIZ

       Foreword

      We finally met across a room, not crowded, but large enough to hold the entire Mathematics Department at Princeton on their occasions of great celebration. On that particular afternoon, there were not so very many people around, but enough for me to be uncertain as to which one was Andrew Wiles. After a few moments I picked out a shy-looking man, listening to the conversation around him, sipping tea, and indulging in the ritual gathering of minds that mathematicians the world over engage in at around four o’clock in the afternoon. He simply guessed who I was.

      It was the end of an extraordinary week. I had met some of the finest mathematicians alive, and begun to gain an insight into their world. But despite every attempt to pin down Andrew Wiles, to speak to him, and to convince him to take part in a BBC Horizon documentary film on his achievement, this was our first meeting. This was the man who had recently announced that he had found the holy grail of mathematics; the man who claimed he had proved Fermat’s Last Theorem. As we spoke, Wiles had a distracted and withdrawn air about him, and although he was polite and friendly, it was clear that he wished me as far away from him as possible. He explained very simply that he could not possibly focus on anything but his work, which was at a critical stage, but perhaps later, when the current pressures had been resolved, he would be pleased to take part. I knew, and he knew I knew, that he was facing the collapse of his life’s ambition, and that the holy grail he had held was now being revealed as no more than a rather beautiful, valuable, but straightforward drinking vessel. He had found a flaw in his heralded proof.

      The story of Fermat’s Last Theorem is unique. By the time I first met

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