British number theorist Andrew Wiles has received the 2016 Abel Prize for his solution to Fermat’s last theorem — a problem that stumped some of the world’s greatest minds for three and a half ...
For almost 200 years, Euler’s conjecture reigned in mathematics unchecked. Then, a paper came out that turned the whole thing on its head… and it did it all in just two sentences. In 1769, ...
For anyone fascinated by powers and integers, there’s no shortage of problems to tackle, whether by ingenious logic or massive computer search. In 1769, while thinking about the problem now known as ...
Maxine Calle is a 2023 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at The Conversation U.S. and she receives funding from the National Science Foundation. David Bressoud does not work for, consult, own shares in or ...
Pierre de Fermat left behind a truly tantalizing hint of a proof when he died—one that mathematicians struggled to complete for centuries. François de Poilly, wikimedia commons The story is familiar ...
Andrew Wiles devoted much of his entire career to proving Fermat's Last Theorem, the world's most famous mathematical problem. In 1993, he made front-page headlines ...
The proof of a mathematical conjecture–even one as famous as Fermat’s last theorem–may sound like an improbable subject for an off-Broadway-style musical. Yet there’s plenty of drama and passion in ...