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Article: Fermat's Last Theorem
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Fermat's Last Theorem
The proof of Fermat's Last Theorem involves two people separated by over 350 years. The first is the French lawyer and mathematician Pierre de Fermat, who, in about 1637, left a note written in the margin of a book. His note said that the equation
a
n
+
b
n
=
c
n
has no solutions when
a, b,
and
c
are whole numbers and
n
is a whole number greater than 2. The note went on to say that he had marvelous proof of this statement, but the book margin was too narrow for him to write out his proof.
In the twentieth century, a 10-year-old British boy named Andrew Wiles read about this problem and was intrigued and challenged by it. No wonder: Fermat's Last Theorem has ...