> you find the quote in constance reid's biography "Hilbert" (springer
> 1970), p. 136. the reason why the wolfskehl prize was kind of a goose
> is scattered throughout the previous chapters, starting p. 120, with
> a summary towards the end of p.135. the goose stopped laying golden
> eggs because of the post-war inflation, see p. 161.
I think that the Hilbert's point wasn't the Wolfskehl prize marks, but
the theorems one discover trying to solve Fermat's problem.
And an example was given by Hilbert (Kummer; see my first posting on this
thread).
Antreas