Robert Langlands

In 1995, British mathematician Andrew Wiles cracked open Fermat’s last theorem, a problem that had vexed the best of mathematicians for more than 350 years. There was another man, though, who had made an important contribution in this matter: Canada-born mathematician Robert Langlands, whose functoriality conjecture became the starting point in the solution of Fermat’s last theorem. Sixty-nine-year-old Langlands was in Mumbai recently to deliver a lecture at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. The Wolf Prize recipient seemed modest about his contribution. “It was one of the many elements in finding the proof for Fermat’s theorem,” he says, admitting it would have been difficult to start off without the functoriality conjecture.Was Fermat’s theorem the final frontier for mathematicians? “It certainly was the most famous and fascinating of all theorems because it is a difficult problem of elementary mathematics. The next challenge could be the proof of Riemann hypothesis. But it won’t attract the same attention,” he says.