"Starting in mid-1986, based on successive progress of the previous few years of Gerhard Frey, Jean-Pierre Serre and Ken Ribet, it became clear that Fermat's Last Theorem could be proved as a corollary of a limited form of the modularity theorem (unproved at the time and then known as the 'Taniyama-Shimura-Weil conjecture')... In June 1993, [Wiles] presented his proof to the public for the first time at a conference in Cambridge." (Wikipedia: Andrew Wiles, 8.6.21 UTC 23:20)
"[Horologium Oscillatorium] is the first modern treatise in which a physical problem is idealized by a set of parameters then analyzed mathematically. It is one of the seminal works of applied mathematics." (Christiaan Huygens: Book on the Pendulum Clock)
"Fifty years ago Gödel... proved that the world of pure mathematics is inexhaustible. No finite set of axioms and rules of inference can ever encompass the whole of mathematics." (Infinite in All Directions, 1988)
"Erdos knows about more problems than anybody else, and he not only knows about various problems and conjectures, but he also knows the tastes of various mathematicians." (N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdos, 1993)
"Erdos lived on the road, traveling from conference to conference, owning nothing but math notebooks and a suitcase or two." (The Mules that Angels Ride, 2005)
"No one but Grothendieck could have taken on algebraic geometry in the full generality he adopted and seen it through to success. It required courage, even daring, total self confidence and immense powers of concentration and hard work." (Michael Atiyah Collected Works: 2002-2013)
"Alexander Grothendieck was very different from Weil in the way he approached mathematics: Grothendieck was nto just a mathematician who could understand the discipline and prove important results - he was a man who could create mathematics. And he did it alone." (The Artist and the Mathematician, 2009)
