Fermat’s last theorem solution
The Event Proof by Andrew Wiles of a long-
standing mathematical conjecture
Date June, 1993-October, 1994
The success of cracking a problem that had been unsolved
for so long and that was comprehensible to the general pub-
lic gave mathematics an unusually visible place in the news
for the rest of the decade.
The seventeenth century French mathematician Pi-
erre de Fermat had scribbled in the margin of a
book he owned the claim that no cube or higher
power of a positive whole number could be written
as the sum of two other positive whole numbers to
the same power. When the claim (dubbed “Fermat’s
last theorem”) was published after his death, prov-
ing it rapidly became the outstanding unsolved
problem in mathematics and remained so for centu-
ries, although progress was made for various special
cases. Trying to figure out how Fermat might have
proved it was an exercise for historians, but mathe-
maticians were looking for any proof. A prize set up
in Germany early in the twentieth century for a suc-
cessful proof attracted plenty of submissions, but all
were flawed. There were some sizable steps forward
starting in 1984, but the mathematical world was
taken aback when Andrew Wiles, a British mathema-
tician teaching at Princeton University, announced
at the end of a series of lectures in June, 1993, in
Cambridge, England, that his work amounted to a
proof of the theorem. Wiles had spent years holed
up in the attic of his home in Princeton, New Jersey,
working on the problem and trying to reveal as little
of his progress as possible to his colleagues.
Electronic distribution of the news of Wiles’s an-
nouncement created great interest in the mathemat-
ical community, and public discussion of the proof
led to unprecedented discussion in the news media,
such as front-page articles inThe New York Times.A
public forum on the result filled a one-thousand-
seat auditorium in San Francisco. Even the news
that there was a gap in the proof did not reduce in-
terest, and Wiles, working with a colleague, was330 Fermat’s last theorem solution The Nineties in America
Princeton University mathematics professor Andrew Wiles solved Fermat’s last theorem, a 350-year-old mathematical puzzle. His work
was commemorated in a musical.(AP/Wide World Photos)