The Wild Numbers is a mathematical fiction in the form of a short novel by Philibert Schogt, a Dutch philosopher and mathematician.

It was first published in Dutch (as "De wilde getallen") in 1998 and an English translation appeared in 2000.

A respected senior faculty of the mathematics department of the college has just given his seal of approval to Isaac's paper describing a proof of the wild number problem.

Immediately a crisis developed as Swift was accused of plagiarising a proof of the problem already discovered by an older student, Leonard Vale.

Vale's accusation was generally ignored because of his cranky behaviour in the department and his tendency to make tall claims on unsolved problems.