Comment by wbl
10 hours ago
Open problems are not that yardstick. Fermat's Last Theorem is the result of Wiles and Wiles-Taylor, but without key results from Serre, Ribet, Ihara, Langlands-Tunnels, and Frey's program none of what Wiles did would work. But Wiles did get the prize. Nowadays I think the inputs have shrunk a bit by doing more in the R=T theorem so less other cleverness needed.
Doing the last step of solving an open problem is the yard stick. But not for much longer: https://davidbessis.substack.com/p/the-fall-of-the-theorem-e...