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Old 03-12-2003, 12:03 PM
Al Mirpuri Al Mirpuri is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 601
Default Re: Fermat\'s Last Theorem

Fermat's Last Theorem states that xn + yn = zn has no non-zero integer solutions for x, y and z when n > 2.

Concerning it, Fermat wrote "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin [Fermat is writing this remark in the margin of his copy of Diophantus's 'Arithmetica'] is too small to contain."

Fermat's proof was never found amongst his mathematical papers. Posterity labelled the Conjecture (because that is all it is without a proof) a Theorem because to do otherwise would have been to label Fermat a liar.

Andrew Wiles, the Princeton academic (an Englishman), who eventually solved it has expressed the fear that Fermat might well have had a simpler more beautiful proof that is now lost to history.

We will never know.
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