Re: Was Fermat\'s Theorem Really Proven?
[ QUOTE ]
Will anyone ever be able to come up with such a "simple" proof, and perhaps more importantly--was Fermat telling the truth?
[/ QUOTE ]
Fermat later claimed less than Fermat's Last Theorem. If he really had a simple proof, he wouldn't have done that.
I don't know how simple a proof there will be at some point. I doubt there will be a something you can show a bright high school student in an hour. Something to keep in mind is that the statement of FLT fails in some extensions of the integers, so you need to use something that is true about the integers, and false for the extensions. Simple algebraic manipulations won't do that.
|