![]() Watching a complete proof to Fermat's Last Theorem, or was the lecturer merely outlining an incomplete and anticlimactic argument? The students standing at the back looked to their seniors for hints of what the conclusion might be. The professors crammed into the front rows waited eagerly for the conclusion. The lecturer had still not announced the proof. ![]() Each line of mathematics appeared to be one tiny step closer to the solution, but after thirty minutes The first board was erased and the algebra continued. When the three blackboards became full, the lecturer paused. Sometimes mathematical mutterings in the senior common room would turn the speculation into rumors of a breakthrough, but Of the Last Theorem would often crop up over tea, and mathematicians would speculate as to who might be doing what. Electronic mail over the Internet had hinted that the lecture would culminate in a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem, the world's most famous mathematical problem. ![]() Witness what they hoped would be a truly historic occasion. Only a quarter of them fully understood the dense mixture of Greek symbols and algebra that covered the blackboard. Two hundred mathematicians were transfixed. It was the most important mathematics lecture of the century. "Immortality" may be a silly word, but probably a mathematician has the best chance of whatever it may mean. ![]() The Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical ProblemĪrchimedes will be remembered when Aeschylus is forgotten, because languages die and mathematical ideas do not. ![]()
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