[0815test]

> There were plenty of people who tackled this problem and who failed to make any headway.

There was also plenty of meaningful progress throughout the 20th century at least, showing that the FLT was implied by other statements which would be easier to prove. Wiles's work was a follow-on to this progress; it's quite misleading to say that it "took" a single guy working over six years to prove FLT.