Fermat’s Last Theorem

Fermat’s Last Theorem

The year is 1637. Pierre de Fermat sits in his library, huddled over a copy of Arithmetica written by the Greek mathematician Diaphantus in the third century A. D. Turning the page, Fermat comes across the Pythagorean equation:

x 2 + y 2 = z 2. He leans back in his chair to think and wonders if this property is limited to the power of two only. He bends over the book again, scanning ahead through the pages to look for any clues. Suddenly, he begins writing intensely in the margin: “It is impossible for a cube to be written as a sum of two cubes, or for a fourth power to be written as the sum of two fourth powers or, in general, for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.” These words, written so carelessly, were to survive to bewilder, frustrate and elude mathematicians of all kinds for centuries to come. This is the legend of Fermat’s Last Theorem.

Pierre de Fermat was born in the town of Beaumont-de-Lomagne in southwestern France at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the year 1601. Being the son of a wealthy merchant, Fermat was able to gain a privileged education at monasteries and universities. The young man, however, never showed any particular strength in the subject of mathematics, choosing instead to pursue a career in the civil service of France. His elevated status in society allowed him to include the “de” in his surname. He suffered a serious attack of the plague during his adult life, severe enough to prompt friends to mistakenly pronounce him dead! Fermat never made math his career, but mathematics at th...

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