Some mathematics problems look simple, and you try them for a year or so, and then you try them for a hundred years, and it turns out that they're extremely hard to solve. There's no reason why these problems shouldn't be easy, and yet they turn out to be extremely intricate. Fermat's Last Theorem is the most beautiful example of this.

Just because we can't find a solution it doesn't mean that there isn't one.

Pure mathematicians just love to try unsolved problems - they love a challenge.

Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they know there are no solutions up to four million or four billion, they really want to know that there are no solutions up to infinity.

Then when I reached college, I realized that many people had thought about the problem during the 18th and 19th centuries and so I studied those methods.

Fermat said he had a proof.

I had this rare privilege of being able to pursue in my adult life, what had been my childhood dream.