Andrew Wiles - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

  • An episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, filmed while Wiles was researching the proof, asserted that Fermat's Last Theorem remains unproven in the 24th century. An episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine mentioned Wiles's proof.
  • He was also mentioned in Stieg Larsson's second book of the Millennium trilogy The Girl Who Played With Fire, and also the third, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. Wiles was credited with solving Fermat's Last Theorem when the female protagonist Lisbeth Salander attempted to solve it.
  • Tom Lehrer updated the lyrics to his song That's Mathematics, to mention that Wiles "confirms what Fermat / Jotted down in that margin / Which could've used some enlargin'."
  • Rock band Bats have a song named after Wiles which describes his career.
  • Wiles and his achievement are also mentioned in Yoko Ogawa's novel The Housekeeper and the Professor.
  • Wiles' 1993 presentation in Cambridge is mentioned in the novel The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martínez, which was adapted into a film of the same title.

Read more about this topic:  Andrew Wiles

Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:

    “The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
    —Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)

    “The popular colleges of the United States are turning out more educated people with less originality and fewer geniuses than any other country.”
    —Caroline Nichols Churchill (1833–?)

    “Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
    —Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)