Exactly. He proves the author's very well. Wiles was tenured, had published in the field already, and made sure that he could continue publishing while working on the Big Problem.
Tenured at Princeton, had already solved some fairly big problems in the field, and it helped that FLT had recently been "reduced" to proving a conjecture about elliptic curves which were already very much in Wiles's wheelhouse.
Not to take away from his achievement, but I think it is not stressed enough how much the proof depends on work from previous decades that a priori had nothing to do with Fermat.
Not to take away from his achievement, but I think it is not stressed enough how much the proof depends on work from previous decades that a priori had nothing to do with Fermat.