Sunday, June 27, 2010

Fermat’s last theorem

A beautiful documentary which narrates the story of Andrew Wiles, who proved Fermat’s last theorem in 1994. Ten-year-old Andrew Wiles read about this 400 years old problem in his local Cambridge library, he dreamt of solving the problem that had haunted so many great mathematicians.

"Here was a problem, that I, a ten-year-old, could understand and I knew from that moment that I would never let it go. I had to solve it."

When he reached college, he spent time studying various approaches that great mathematicians of 18th and 19th century who tried to prove the conjecture. In 1986 Another mathematician found a link between some properties of elliptic curves (Taniyama-Shimura conjecture) and the problem.

After six years of working alone in 1993 he managed to achieve his childhood dream.

"You can't really focus yourself for years unless you have undivided concentration, which too many spectators would have destroyed"

What other mathematical documentaries are you fond of?

This would be a great place to share them :)

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