In 1995, Andrew Wiles won worldwide acclaim when he finally laid to rest one of the oldest mathematical chestnuts of the modern era. After more than 350 years, Pierre de Fermat's deceptively simple claim that he famously jotted down in a margin was now unequivocally true: the conjecture had at last become a full-fledged theorem.
But what, in fact, had Wiles done? Had he actually discovered something? Or had he simply cleverly moved a bunch of symbols around?
Most mathematicians prefer not to even address that sort of question. But James Robert Brown, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto and implacable Platonist, has no such hesitation. For Jim, Wiles is every bit the discoverer that Einstein and Darwin were, a bold explorer uncovering new truths about the mathematical world.
But where is that world, exactly? And how, precisely, could Wiles have peered into it? We met up with Jim in Toronto to try to find out.
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