Fermat's Last Theorem Read Free Page B

puzzle books and this is what often caught Andrew’s attention. These books were packed with all sorts of scientific conundrums and mathematical riddles, and for each question the solution would be conveniently laid out somewhere in the final few pages. But this time Andrew was drawn to a book with only one problem, and no solution.
    The book was
The Last Problem
by Eric Temple Bell, the history of a mathematical problem which has its roots in ancient Greece, but which only reached full maturity in the seventeenth century. It was then that the great French mathematician Pierre de Fermat inadvertently set it as a challenge for the rest of the world. One great mathematician after another had been humbled by Fermat’s legacy and for three hundred years nobody had been able to solve it. There are other unsolved questions in mathematics, but what makes Fermat’s problem so special is its deceptive simplicity. Thirty years after first reading Bell’s account, Wiles told me how he felt the moment he was introduced to Fermat’s Last Theorem: ‘It looked so simple, and yet all the great mathematicians in history couldn’t solve it. Here was a problem that I, a ten-year-old, could understand and I knew from that moment that I would never let it go. I had to solve it.’
    The problem looks so straightforward because it is based on the one piece of mathematics that everyone can remember – Pythagoras’ theorem:
    In a right-angled triangle the square on the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.
    As a result of this Pythagorean ditty, the theorem has been scorched into millions if not billions of human brains. It is the fundamental theorem that every innocent schoolchild is forced to learn. But despite the fact that it can be understood by a ten-year-old, Pythagoras’ creation was the inspiration for a problem which had thwarted the greatest mathematical minds of history.
    Pythagoras of Samos was one of the most influential and yet mysterious figures in mathematics. Because there are no first-hand accounts of his life and work, he is shrouded in myth and legend, making it difficult for historians to separate fact from fiction. What seems certain is that Pythagoras developed the idea of numerical logic and was responsible for the first golden age of mathematics. Thanks to his genius numbers were no longer merely used to count and calculate, but were appreciated in their own right. He studied the properties of particular numbers, the relationships between them and the patterns they formed. He realised that numbers exist independently of the tangible world and therefore their study was untainted by the inaccuracies of perception. This meant he could discover truths which were independent of opinion or prejudice and which were more absolute than any previous knowledge.
    Living in the sixth century BC , Pythagoras gained his mathematical skills on his travels throughout the ancient world. Some tales would have us believe that he travelled as far as India and Britain, but what is more certain is that he gathered many mathematical techniques and tools from the Egyptians and Babylonians. Both these ancient peoples had gone beyond the limits of simple counting and were capable of performing complex calculations which enabled them to create sophisticated accounting systems and construct elaborate buildings. Indeed they saw mathematics as merely a tool for solving practical problems; the motivation behind discovering some of the basic rules of geometry wasto allow reconstruction of field boundaries which were lost in the annual flooding of the Nile. The word itself, geometry, means ‘to measure the earth’.
    Pythagoras observed that the Egyptians and Babylonians conducted each calculation in the form of a recipe which could be followed blindly. The recipes, which would have been passed down through the generations, always gave the correct answer and so nobody bothered