Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is a
proof of the
modularity theorem for
semistable elliptic curves released by
Andrew Wiles, which, together with
Ribet's theorem, provides a proof for
Fermat's Last Theorem. Both Fermat's Last Theorem and the Modularity Theorem were almost universally considered inaccessible to proof by contemporaneous mathematicians, seen as virtually impossible to prove using current knowledge. Wiles first announced his proof on Wednesday 23 June 1993 at a lecture in Cambridge entitled "Elliptic Curves and Galois Representations." However, the proof was found to contain an error in September 1993. One year later, on Monday 19 September 1994, in what he would call "the most important moment of [his] working life," Wiles stumbled upon a revelation, "so indescribably beautiful... so simple and so elegant," that allowed him to correct the proof to the satisfaction of the mathematical community. The correct proof was published in May 1995. The proof uses many techniques from
algebraic geometry and
number theory, and has many ramifications in these branches of mathematics. It also uses standard constructions of modern algebraic geometry, such as the
category of
schemes and
Iwasawa theory, and other 20th-century techniques not available to Fermat.