Editing Andrew Wiles (section)

==Education and early life==
Wiles was born on 11 April 1953 in [[Cambridge, England|Cambridge]], England, the son of [[Maurice Wiles|Maurice Frank Wiles]] (1923–2005) and Patricia Wiles (née Mowll). From 1952 to 1955, his father worked as the chaplain at [[Ridley Hall, Cambridge]], and later became the [[Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford]].<ref name="whoswho">{{Who's Who |title=Wiles, Sir Andrew (John ) |id=U39819| doi =10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.39819 | author=Anon|year=2017|edition = online [[Oxford University Press]]|location=Oxford}}</ref>

Wiles began his formal schooling in Nigeria, while living there as a very young boy with his parents. However, according to letters written by his parents, for at least the first several months after he was supposed to be attending classes, he refused to go. From that fact, Wiles himself concluded that in his earliest years, he was not enthusiastic about spending time in academic institutions. In an interview with [[Nadia Hasnaoui]] in 2021, he said he trusted the letters, yet he could not remember a time when he did not enjoy solving mathematical problems.<ref name="YouTube Interview">{{cite web | title=Interview with Andrew Wiles |publisher=The Abel Prize| via=YouTube | url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baUlp5EWhCk |date=10 March 2021| access-date=15 November 2023}}</ref>

Wiles attended [[King's College School, Cambridge]],<ref>{{cite web |title=Alumni |url=https://www.kcs.cambs.sch.uk/about-us/alumni/ |publisher=King's College School, Cambridge |access-date=1 February 2022}}</ref> and [[The Leys School, Cambridge]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Old Leysian Prof Sir Andrew Wiles wins the Copley Medal |url=https://www.theleys.net/media/news/article/234/old-leysian-prof-sir-andrew-wiles-wins-the-copley-medal |publisher=The Leys & St Faith's Schools Foundation |access-date=1 February 2022 |date=2 November 2017}}</ref> Wiles told [[WGBH-TV]] in 1999 that he came across Fermat's Last Theorem on his way home from school when he was 10 years old. He stopped at his local library where he found a book ''The Last Problem'', by [[Eric Temple Bell]], about the theorem.<ref name=pbs/> Fascinated by the existence of a theorem that was so easy to state that he, a ten-year-old, could understand it, but that no one had proven, he decided to be the first person to prove it. However, he soon realised that his knowledge was too limited, so he abandoned his childhood dream until it was brought back to his attention at the age of 33 by [[Ken Ribet]]'s 1986 proof of the [[epsilon conjecture]], which [[Gerhard Frey]] had previously linked to Fermat's equation.<ref>{{cite book|last=Chang|first=Sooyoung|title=Academic Genealogy of Mathematicians|date=2011|isbn=9789814282291|page=207|publisher=World Scientific |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4siw31DPONUC&pg=PA207}}</ref>