Fermat's Enigma

Fermat's Enigma

By Simon Singh

Pages

315

Rating

4.29

Year

1997

Description

xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ... — no solution.

"I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain."

With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple; proving it, however, became the Holy Grail of mathematics, baffling its finest minds for more than 350 years. In Fermat's Enigma, based on the author's documentary film which aired on PBS's "Nova", Simon Singh tells the astonishingly entertaining story of the pursuit of that grail, and the lives that were devoted to, sacrificed for, and saved by it. Here is a mesmerizing tale of heartbreak and mastery that will forever change your feelings about mathematics.

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