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- What I find interesting in this show is that he took a hiatus from his profesorship to spend the time to find the proof. I think it was years. Also, he found the proof by providing a different conjecture(is that right) to solve Fermat.
Higher mathematics is just a different world to those of us who haven't even a clue how that world functions.
- I'm not a mathematician and AI doesn't answer very well. Could someone tell us how big an endeavour this is: https://github.com/ImperialCollegeLondon/FLT ?
(the site is : "An ongoing multi-author open source project to formalise a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in the Lean theorem prover.")
by wiz21c - From 2000.
Posting because he's retiring this year?
by fnands - I have a truly marvellous comment on this, which this comment box is too small to contain.
- > NOVA: So Fermat's original proof is still out there somewhere.
> AW: I don't believe Fermat had a proof. I think he fooled himself into thinking he had a proof. But what has made this problem special for amateurs is that there's a tiny possibility that there does exist an elegant 17th-century proof.
Yes, it's generally accepted that Fermat didn't in fact have a proof, with the tools available to him at the time. But wouldn't it be cool to send some AI on this chase and see what comes back? Is anyone attempting this?
by bambax - Recent LLM dingers like the Jacobian Conjecture counterexample have challenged the efficient mathematics hypothesis. The JC counterexample was so small in degree and coefficient. It should have been a "low fruit" in the scheme of things, but alas, unpicked for 50+ years with considerable attention from good mathematicians.
With respect to FLT, my hopes have modestly increased that a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition does in fact exist, that Fermat actually had it, and that it may someday be recovered!
edit: some emphasis on modest. But let me be romantic here!
by NiloCK - This is the most offensively-themed serious site I have ever seen.
- This was an excellent introduction to this topic:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem_(book) by Simon Singh
But I am not sure if the book covers the mistake and later correction. It has been more than a decade since I read the book (and became a fan of the author).
by albert_e