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

I know it's a rare privilege, but if one can really tackle something in adult life that means that much to you, then it's more rewarding than anything I can imagine.

That particular odyssey is now over. My mind is now at rest.

I tried to fit it in with some previous broad conceptual understanding of some part of mathematics that would clarify the particular problem I was thinking about.

However impenetrable it seems, if you don't try it, then you can never do it.

Fermat said he had a proof.

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.

Always try the problem that matters most to you.

Well, 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.

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

The greatest problem for mathematicians now is probably the Riemann Hypothesis.

Perhaps the methods I needed to complete the proof would not be invented for a hundred years. So even if I was on the right track, I could be living in the wrong century.

I'm sure that some of them will be very hard and I'll have a sense of achievement again, but nothing will mean the same to me - there's no other problem in mathematics that could hold me the way that this one did.

I grew up in Cambridge in England, and my love of mathematics dates from those early childhood days.

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

I realized that anything to do with Fermat's Last Theorem generates too much interest.

The only way I could relax was when I was with my children.

The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.

I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof.

But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library.

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

We've lost something that's been with us for so long, and something that drew a lot of us into mathematics. But perhaps that's always the way with math problems, and we just have to find new ones to capture our attention.

There's also a sense of freedom. I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about if all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night, and that went on for eight years.

I really believed that I was on the right track, but that did not mean that I would necessarily reach my goal.

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.

I was so obsessed by this problem that I was thinking about it all the time - when I woke up in the morning, when I went to sleep at night - and that went on for eight years.

I loved doing problems in school.

It's fine to work on any problem, so long as it generates interesting mathematics along the way - even if you don't solve it at the end of the day.

I hope that seeing the excitement of solving this problem will make young mathematicians realize that there are lots and lots of other problems in mathematics which are going to be just as challenging in the future.

There are proofs that date back to the Greeks that are still valid today.

It could be that the methods needed to take the next step may simply be beyond present day mathematics. Perhaps the methods I needed to complete the proof would not be invented for a hundred years.

I loved doing problems in school. I'd take them home and make up new ones of my own. But the best problem I ever found, I found in my local public library. I was just browsing through the section of math books and I found this one book, which was all about one particular problem - Fermat's Last Theorem.

Pure mathematician just love to try unsolved problems they love a challenge.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

To do the Ozzfest again would be great. I'd like to finish with a final Sabbath album. You always feel that it is still a challenge.

People are not perfect... very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they've had to work through them. So the challenge to us is to work through that.

Every single book is a challenge.

Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews, to challenge every new author.

The lopsided attitudes of college professors pose a serious challenge to learning because students are so susceptible to becoming lopsided sheep.

I really enjoy comedy. It's a real challenge.

I had a hard time with that hockey. I hadn't grown up skating, so that was my biggest challenge. We worked on it and worked on it. But then when we first shot it, it was so hard for me.

The challenge is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.

Change can either challenge or threaten us. Your beliefs pave your way to success or block you.

My greatest challenge has been to change the mindset of people. Mindsets play strange tricks on us. We see things the way our minds have instructed our eyes to see.

I'd say that it's important for music to be there that gives you a challenge, that rearranges things in your head.

I like good stories. Quality products and character are what's important. Even if the script isn't that strong, if I challenge myself with a great character, I'll go for it.

I tend to arrive in the rehearsal process with very strongly developed ideas about what I want to do. But I don't like those ideas to be things that are not subject to change, or subject to development, or subject to challenge.

I'm not looking to set a standard... but, I believe I have offered a challenge to others with my work.

If you live a life of make-believe, your life isn't worth anything until you do something that does challenge your reality. And to me, sailing the open ocean is a real challenge, because it's life or death.