Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem. This item is unavailable.
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Language: English
Published by Viking Press/Penguin, New York, 1997
- First Edition
- Hardcover
- Used
Seller: Back Lane Books, North Vancouver, BC, CanadaBack Lane Books
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Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem, Singh, Simon. Published by Viking/Penguin, Toronto, Boston, New York, 1997. First Edition. 315pp. with appendices, index, illustrated. Foreword by John Lynch. Black boards with copper titles, yellow endpapers. Volume is in fine, unread condition and housed in a fine clipped dustjacket. xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, .no solution "I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple; proving it, however, became the Holy Grail of mathematics, baffling its finest minds for more than 350 years.
Seller Inventory # 004719
- Title
- Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem
- Author
- Singh, Simon
- Publisher
- Viking Press/Penguin, New York
- Publication year
- 1997
- Condition
- Fine
- Binding
- Hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0670877565
- ISBN 13
- 9780670877560
- Illustrator
- Illustrated
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Seller catalogs
- HISTORY, POLITICS, ECONOMICS, MEMOIR AND BIOGRAPHY, SCIENCE AND NATURE
With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple; proving it, however, became the Holy Grail of mathematics, baffling its finest minds for more than 350 years.
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Review
When Andrew Wiles of Princeton University announced a solution of Fermat's last theorem in 1993, it electrified the world of mathematics. After a flaw was discovered in the proof, Wiles had to work for another year--he had already labored in solitude for seven years--to establish that he had solved the 350-year-old problem. Simon Singh's book is a lively, comprehensible explanation of Wiles's work and of the star-, trauma-, and wacko-studded history of Fermat's last theorem. Fermat's Enigma contains some problems that offer a taste of the math, but it also includes limericks to give a feeling for the goofy side of mathematicians.
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