British mathematician Sir Andrew Wiles on 15 March 2016 was named as the winner of the 2016 Abel Prize by the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters in Oslo.
•    Wiles won the award for solving a centuries-old hypothesis, Fermat's Last Theorem.
•    Crown Prince Haakon will present the award to Wiles in May 2016 for an achievement that the academy described as an epochal moment for mathematics.
•    Sir Andrew John Wiles is a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford, specialising in number theory.
•    He is most notable for proving Fermat's Last Theorem.
•    He earned his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1974 at Merton College, Oxford, and a PhD in 1980 at Clare College, Cambridge.
•    In 1985–86, he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques near Paris and at the École Normale Supérieure.
•    From 1988 to 1990, he was a Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford. He rejoined Oxford in 2011 as Royal Society Research Professor.
•    In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two. The cases n = 1 and n = 2 are known to have infinitely many solutions since ancient times.
•    The theorem was first conjectured by Pierre de Fermat in 1637.
•    However, the first successful proof was released in 1994 by Andrew Wiles. It was formally published in 1995, after 358 years of effort by mathematicians.
•    It is among the most notable theorems in the history of mathematics and prior to its proof it was in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most difficult mathematical problem.
•    The Abel Prize is a Norwegian prize awarded annually by the Government of Norway to one or more outstanding mathematicians.
•    It is named after Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel.
•    The award was established in 2001 by the Government of Norway.
•    It comes with a monetary award of 6 million Norwegian kroner.
•    The Abel Prize is described as the mathematician's Nobel Prize.
•    John F. Nash, Jr. And Louis Nirenberg were the winners of the 2015 Abel Prize.