Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem (U)

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. In Fermat's Enigma--based On The Author's Award-winning Documentary Film, Which Aired On Pbs's Nova--simon Singh Tells The Astonishingly Entertaining Story Of The Pursuit Of That Grail, And The Lives That Were Devoted To, Sacrificed For, And Saved By It. Here Is A Mesmerizing Tale Of Heartbreak And Mastery That Will Forever Change Your Feelings About Mathematics. 1. I Think I'll Stop Here 1 -- 2. The Riddler 35 -- 3. A Mathematical Disgrace 71 -- 4. Into Abstraction 121 -- 5. Proof By Contradiction 171 -- 6. The Secret Calculation 205 -- 7. A Slight Problem 255 -- Epilogue Grand Unified Mathematics 279 -- Suggestions For Further Reading 301 -- Picture Credits 306. Simon Singh ; Foreword By John Lynch. Originally Published: New York : Walker, 1997. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 301-305) And Index.