Solving Fermat: Andrew Wiles' Journey to Prove the Last Theorem
From a childhood discovery in a Cambridge library to a decades-long obsession, I dedicated my life to solving Fermat's Last Theorem. After a breakthrough linked the problem to the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture, I worked in isolation to construct a proof. Despite a devastating error that nearly ended my career, I eventually corrected the mistake and achieved my lifelong ambition, proving a proposition that had baffled mathematicians for three centuries.
The definition of a good mathematical problem is the mathematics it generates rather than the problem itself.
- albert_e
This was an excellent introduction to this topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem_(book)
by Simon Singh
But I am not sure if the book covers the mistake and later correction. I has been more than a decade sine I read the book (and became a fan of the author).
- NiloCK
Recent LLM dingers like the Jacobian Conjecture counterexample have challenged the efficient mathematics hypothesis. The JC counterexample was so small in degree and coefficient. It should have been a "low fruit" in the scheme of things, but alas, unpicked for 50+ years with considerable attention from good mathematicians.
With respect to FLT, my hopes have modestly increased that a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition does in fact exist, that Fermat actually had it, and that it may someday be recovered!
edit: some emphasis on modest. But let me be romantic here!
- FeepingCreature
This is the most offensively-themed serious site I have ever seen.