Professor awarded $700,000 for solving Fermat's Last Theorem

[OnlinePoker]

It was a problem that had baffled mathematicians for centuries -- until British professor Andrew Wiles set his mind to it.

"There are no whole number solutions to the equation xn + yn = zn when n is greater than 2."

Otherwise known as "Fermat's Last Theorem," this equation was first posed by French mathematician Pierre de Fermat in 1637, and had stumped the world's brightest minds for over 300 years.

http://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/16/europe/fermats-last-theorem-solved-math-abel-prize/index.html

[Takket]

1. whoever wrote that article doesn't know mathematical notation

it should read x^n + y^n = z^n

^ meaning "to the power of" when written in a font that doesn't support superscripts.

[RKP5637]

3. Thank you!!! I had seriously encountered that before! K&R!!! n/t

[eppur_se_muova]

11. Meh. Someone doesn't know about [sup] and [/sup].

xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ

See how that works ?

Use sub for subscripts -- H₂O, e.g.

[Orrex]

17. That's a bummer, because I solved the writer's formulation of the theorem

xn + yn = zn

The way I see it,
n = 4
x = 2
y = 3
z = 5

Give me my $700K!

[muriel_volestrangler]

19. It's fine in the article; it's just when pasted onto DU without eppur_se_muova's 'sup' tag

that it doesn't look right. The article's font does use superscripts.

[2naSalit]

2. Well that's a nice cash prize...

wonder if he anticipated it. It's big f'ing deal to have solved this, I surely couldn't have.

[Gregorian]

4. The best part was, he was in love with this equation at the age of 10.

I loved math. Took way too many years of it.

[Lucky Luciano]

5. Then there is reclusive mathematician Grigory Perleman living in his mother's basement

who solved the Poincaré conjecture in dimension 3 - and then promptly turned down the $1 million prize from the Clay institute and refused all accolades and other awards.

[LannyDeVaney]

6. There is a pretty cool legend about this theorem, related to why it's called his 'Last' theorem ...

When he first proposed the theorem, he wrote in the margin that he had a proof but it was too long to fit in the margin.

And he died before telling anybody the proof.

[eppur_se_muova]

12. Math depts. throughout the world have received all manner of "proofs" ...

from people who really can't do proofs, including some real cranks. One dept. took to sending out rejection letters which said that there was a reason their proof didn't work, but the explanation was too long to fit in the letter.

[jberryhill]

7. Well I hope they don't teach our kids these theorems

Parents should decide what theorems are taught in school, and not force our kids to believe that some French guy is right.

[MrScorpio]

8. I wish that I could understand what all of this means, but congrats to the Prof anyway. nt

[msanthrope]

14. Math that involves letters? A bit above my pay grade. nt

[Nye Bevan]

9. Nerd pride! I love this guy! (nt)

[panader0]

10. Where's Matt Damon when you need him?

[eppur_se_muova]

13. He also collected the Wolfskehl prize for this ....

Barner’s reason for researching the history behind the Wolfskehl Prize was that on June 28th, 1997, almost a century after Wolfskehl’s death, the prize was awarded to Andrew Wiles for his proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem. However, the prize, which was originally worth £1 million, had suffered because of the hyperinflation which followed the First World War and the introduction of the Deutschmark in 1948, and as a result Wiles received only £30,000. As far as Wiles is concerned, the prize money is not important. Fermat’s Last Theorem had obsessed him since he was a boy, and so discovering a proof was the realisation of a childhood dream.

http://simonsingh.net/media/articles/maths-and-science/the-wolfskehl-prize/

[JDPriestly]

15. For more information on this (for those of us who are not by trade mathematicians)

here is a book that explains what this fuss is about.

Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem.[1][3]

(American title)

A mathematician loaned it to me. I read it. It is readable even if you are not a mathematical genius, even if you are not extremely mathematically literate.

I loved the book. A good read.

[So Far From Heaven]

16. This problem, and its prize was a key part of "The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo"

The author used the girl solving the problem is an elegant fashion to instill the reader with the underlying genius of the girl who was basically ostracized by people for her 'strange' behavior.

Sometimes the opposite happens. In physics the exponential e^(i*pi) is used extensively in problems dealing with periodic behavior such as waves and quantum mechanics. Sorry, I'm so used to coding that it's easier for me to type it that way. How the exponential came into being is truly funny as shown by this quote from its originator:

"Gentlemen, e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0 is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be truth." — Benjamin Peirce, 19th century Harvard mathematician

[Orrex]

18. This asshole has destroyed Star Trek continuity

Thanks a lot, Andy.

[ProfessorGAC]

20. Impossible

Picard, in an episode of ST:NG, says that the problem they just faced may never be solved, just like Fermat's last theorem. So, this can't be solved, because i saw it on TV.

[muriel_volestrangler]

21. His father was a code-breaker at Bletchley Park in WW2

Maurice Frank Wiles, the son of a civil servant, was educated at Tonbridge School, Kent, where he excelled at cricket and classics. His open scholarship to Christ's College, Cambridge, was deferred by the war, and after Pearl Harbor he was recruited to learn Japanese fast and work at Bletchley Park on the military attache code, and later the army-airforce code, work that not even his friends learned about for many years.
...
http://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/jun/10/guardianobituaries.obituaries

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wiles