Fermat’s Last Theorem · The Story of A Riddle that Confounded the World’s Greatest Minds for 358 Years

- Authors
- Singh, Simon
- Publisher
- HarperPress
- Tags
- science , history
- ISBN
- 9780007381999
- Date
- 1997-09-08T00:00:00+00:00
- Size
- 1.10 MB
- Lang
- en
When Andrew Wiles of Princeton University announced a solution of Fermat's last theorem in 1993, it electrified the world of mathematics. After a flaw was discovered in the proof, Wiles had to work for another year--he had already labored in solitude for seven years--to establish that he had solved the 350-year-old problem. Simon Singh's book is a lively, comprehensible explanation of Wiles's work and of the star-, trauma-, and wacko-studded history of Fermat's last theorem. *Fermat's Enigma* contains some problems that offer a taste of the math, but it also includes limericks to give a feeling for the goofy side of mathematicians.