| 21 January 2010
One of the Bandit's all time favorite books. Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh delves into the life and times of a French amateur mathematician from 17th century. The book creates a wonderful foundation of mathematical history from the Greeks to current day mathematicians. One of my favorite discussions was the introduction of the concept of a perfect number by the Greeks. A perfect number is a number where the sum of it's factors equals the number.
The first perfect number is 6, e.g. factors 3,2,1. The next perfect number is 28, e.g. 14,7,4,2,1. It always amazes me how some mathematicians are able to leap from the known into the depths of the unknown, sometimes with ease and create new frontiers.
The foundation for Fermat's Enigma is the Pythagorean theorem, x^2 + y^2 = z^2. Almost everyone that has had some semblance of math can rattle off one of the initial integer solution of x=3, y=4, and z=5. Fermat decided to tackle the proof that for any n dimension, x^n + y^n = z^n, there also existed an integer solution for x,y, and z. After Fermat's death, one of his journals was found where he stated in the margins that he had solved the proof. But, the proof was never found and became known as Fermat's Lost Theorem. Many mathematicians from the 17th century to 20th century caught the bug and tried to recreate the proof. This theorem became so famous that in the early 1900's a famous mathematical society create a monetary prize for the first person to solve the problem with an accepted proof. This book then focuses on some of the 20th century mathematicians and their attempts to solve the problem and the new frontiers that were created from trying to solve this proof. Fermat's Enigma concludes with Princeton mathematician Andrew Wiles accepted solution in 1995 after 350 years of trials and tribulations.
Fermat's Enigma can be found here at Amazon.com