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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mag123" data-source="post: 21113922" data-attributes="member: 73975">24 MAY 2016 • 8:49AM When Andrew Wiles received the £500,000 Abel Prize for mathematics last week, there was a general sense of “At last!” in the mathematical community. After all, Professor Wiles had already won almost every other prize for his 1995 proof of Fermat’s last theorem, the most notorious problem in the history of mathematics. As it has been mentioned in Dr Who, Star Trek, The Simpsons and the Liz Hurley blockbuster Bedazzled, I would hope that most people would know the intricacies of Fermat’s last theorem by now, but here’s a quick recap for those who are still puzzled about why there is so much fuss over solving a maths problem. Given that there are infinitely many possible numbers to check it was quite a claim, but Fermat was absolutely sure that no numbers fitted the equation because he had a logical watertight argument. Sadly, he never wrote down his proof. Instead, in the margin of a book, he left a tantalizing note in Latin: “I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition (demonstrationem mirabilem) which this margin is too narrow to contain.” After Fermat’s death, mathematicians found lots of similar notes (“I can prove this, but I have to feed the cat” or “I can prove that, but I have to wash my hair”), so they set about rediscovering Fermat’s supposed proofs. They were successful in every case, except proving that (an + bn = cn) has no solutions, which is why it became known as Fermat’s last theorem, namely the last one that could be proven. For three centuries, mathematicians tried and failed to find a proof, which is why Wiles’s eventual success was such a major achievement, and why he has been showered with prizes and accolades. For example, there was the King Faisal International Prize (£140,000), the Wolf Prize (£70,000), a knighthood and the Oxford maths department is now housed in the Andrew Wiles Building. It was even rumoured that Gap asked him to endorse its range of menswear.</blockquote>

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