Mathematical research is generally thought to be a solitary pursuit. And some mathematicians do indeed spend their professional lives in lone contemplation of a single problem.
The dramatic announcement in 1993 by Andrew Wiles of Princeton University that he had proved Fermat’s last theorem appeared to belong to this category of discovery. Wiles had isolated himself from the rest of the mathematical community for nearly 8 years to work on the problem. Only a select few were aware of what he was trying to accomplish.