[glaberficken]

Note that with Andrew Wiles all the secrecy and seclusion almost exploded on his face. When he first came public with the Fermat proof someone found a flaw in it within 2 months.

It took another 2 years (he was ready to give up by then) to finally come up with a "fix" for the flaw that had been found.

So in the end he was only successful after exposing it to the public for scrutiny and breaking down the problem into something smaller.

[joe_the_user]

Sure but if Wiles hadn't been secret, he'd be making progress reports all along and plausibly the person who made the fix would be the one who credited with the proof.

It's kind of shame that the quest for credit works this way, secrecy has all sorts of costs but in this instance it clearly had benefits too.