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

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
Downloaded: 46 times

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.