Fermat’s Last Theorem

“Greatest mysteries hide in the simplest things” a wise man once said. And the famous Fermat’s last theorem is perhaps the best example of this. Who would have thought that one of the hardest math problems would look as simple as something you might see in a high school textbook. Fermat’s last theorem states that no three positive integers (greater than 2) can satifsty the following equation: aⁿ + bⁿ = cⁿ . And as simple as it looks, it has haunted the greatest mathematicians for centuries. The book we have here tells the history of this great mystery and how it was solved.

Basic Info 

• Paperback: 315 pages
• Publisher: Anchor; 1st Anchor Books ed edition (September 8, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385493622
• ISBN-13: 978-0385493628
• Average Amazon Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars (277 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #24,086 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

About the Author

Simon Singh is a popular science journalist who is famous for his Fermat’s Last Theorem documentary, which he produced for the Horizon series. In addition, Simon Singh is also a particle physicist – he received his PhD in particle physics from Cambridge University.  He is also a renowned author famous for a no. 1 bestseller books in UK including “Fermat’s Last Theorem” and “The Code Book”.

Short Review

It all started when more than 300 years ago a French lawyer and an amateur mathematician Pierre de Fermat wrote a short passage in an old copy of an edition of Diophantus. These couple of symbols and a sentence, saying that the margin is too small for the proof of the given theorem, later became known as Fermat’s last unproven theorem. For 358 years this unproven theorem was known as the greatest problem of mathematics.

This bestseller book tells the real story of the Fermat’s famous theorem and how an amazing mathematician Andrew Wiles came up with a proof of it and became an international celebrity over night. Besides, this great book gives an insight to the mysterious and sometimes strange lives of famous mathematicians, which will be especially appealing for those with an interest in history of mathematics.

Links:

1) More books by Simon Singh

2) Fermat’s Last Theorem on Amazon:

Comments

comments

Tags: book review, fermat's last theorem, mathematics, physics database