Elhaam Parveen Hasan

Class XII (Horizon)

What could be the most

notorious problem in the

history of mathematics with
one of the greatest stories
imaginable?
It has dominated the lives of
many mathematicians over
the centuries.

It is, of course,

FERMATS

LAST THEOREM

Pierre de Fermat, the great French

mathematician. A jurist by profession, he was a
lawyer at the Parliament of Toulouse, France,
and an amateur mathematician.
Born in Beaumont-de-Lomagne, near
Montauban. France, he was the son of
Dominique Fermat, a rich leather merchant, later
second consul of Beaumont-de-Lomagne and
Claire de Long. He was of Basque origin. His
mother, Claire de Long was a teacher of
mathematics.
Fermat was a man who made notable
contributions to analytic geometry,

Fermat believed he could prove his theorem,

but he never committed his proof to paper.
It is believed that the creation and proof of the
Last Theorem happened in about 1637, but it
was not until after Fermats death in 1665 that
his marginal note came to light.
His son, Clment-Samuel, discovered the casual
jotting along with many others, all hinting at
theorems, but at best giving only a glimpse of
the underlying proof. Then in 1670 he
published Diophantus Arithmetica Containing
Observations by P. de Fermat, which contained
Diophantus original text interspersed by
Fermats notes.

Fermats Life
In the second half of the 1620s. he moved to
Bordeaux where he began his first serious
mathematical researches. From Bordeaux
Fermat went to Orlans where he studied law at
the University. He became a councillor at the
parliament in 1631 and receved the title of
councillor at the High Court of Judicature in
Toulouse, which he held for the rest of his life. In
1648 he was promoted to king's counselor in
the Parliament of Toulouse. He quickly moved
up the ranks and in 1652, he became the chief
magistrate of the criminal court. His work
allowed to spend large amounts of time in
isolation. It was during this time, he obeying his
passion for mathematics developed the
fundamental theorem and theories.
In 1631 he married his mother's cousin, Louise
de Long; they had three sons and two
daughters. Contemporaries described him as an
honest, accurate, balanced and genial man, a
brilliantly erudite in mathematics and in the
humanities, a connoisseur of many ancient and
living languages, in which he wrote good
poetry. He died on January 12, 1665 in Castres,
France.
There is some doubt as to the precise date of
his birth. He is said to have been baptized on
Aug. 20, 1601, but his tombstone puts his birth
as 1608, and others have stated 1595. He was a
professional lawyer who pursued mathematics
in his spare time. Fluent in Latin, Greek, Italian,
and Spanish, Fermat was praised for his written
verse in several languages, and his advice was
eagerly sought regarding the emendation of
Greek texts. Sir Isaac Newton said that his
invention of calculus was based a large part on
Fermat's method of tangents. He is best known
for legend Fermat's Last Theorem (1637), which
states that for natural numbers x, y, and z there is
no natural number n greater than 2 for which xn
+ yn = zn is true. He died without revealing his
proof and it was not until 1994 that the English
mathematician Andrew enough to contain." A
lunar crater and a street in Paris are named after
him.

Fermats
Contributions
The analytic geometry. A
contemporary of Ren
Descartes, he independently
came up with a threedimensional geometry, but did
not publish his work, and the
field became known as
Cartesian geometry. The
number theory. His brilliant
research entitled him to rank
as the founder of the modern
number theory. He stated the
Fermat's Last Theorem (1637) as well as Fermat's little
theorem( 1640), and developed the inductive infinite
descent method, which was the first general proof of
diophantine questions.
He made some discoveries in regard to the properties
of numbers, on which he afterwards built his method of
calculating probabilities. Mathematical analysis. He
discovered an original method for determining maxima,
minima, and tangents to various curves that was
equivalent to differential calculus. He obtained a
technique for finding the centers of gravity of various
plane and solid figures, which led to his further work in
quadrature. The resulting formula was helpful to Newton,
and then Leibniz, when they independently developed
the fundamental theorem of calculus. The theory of
probability.
In 1654, Blaise Pascal wrote a letter asking about
Fermat's views on probability. Their series of
correspondences became the foundation of
probability theory. In 1660 he planned to meet with
Pascal, but meeting not held due to ill of both scientists.
Optics. He discovered the least time principle which
states that light will travel through an optical system in
such a way as to pass from starting to ending point in
the least amount of time Fermat's principle of least time
was the first variational principle enunciated in physics.
In this way, Fermat is recognized as a key figure in the
historical development of the fundamental principle of
least action in physics. The term Fermat functional was
named in recognition of this role.

WHAT IS THE LAST

THEOREM?
Pierre de Fermat created the Last Theorem while studying
Arithmetica, an ancient Greek text written in about AD 250 by
Diophantus of Alexandria. The page of Arithmetica which inspired
Fermat discussed various aspects of Pythagoras Theorem, which
states that:
In a right-angled triangle the square of the hypotenuse is
equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.

x + y = z
Pythagoras Theorem is not just a nice idea, or a notion that seems to work
for most right-angled triangles. It is always true and mathematicians can
prove this.
Fermat was interested in whole number solutions to Pythagoras equation,
such that x, y, and z could be any whole number, except zero.
The numbers (3, 4, 5) or (5, 12, 13) are known as Pythahorean triples, and
such triples have been studied for thousands of years. Indeed, ancient
Babylonian tablets list Pythagorean triples.
There are an infinite number of Pythogorean triples. This can be
demonstrated by looking at looking at the difference between successive
square numbers. You can see that every odd number is the difference
between two squares. Therefore every square odd number is the
difference between two squares. There are an infinite number of square
odd numbers, so there must be an infinite number of Pythagorean triples.
Fermat must have been bored with such a tried and tested equation, and as a
result he considered a slightly mutated version of the equation:
x + y = z
Surprisingly, the Frenchman came to the conclusion that among the infinity of
numbers there were none that fitted this new equation, which is said to be cubic
or to the third power. Whereas Pythagoras equation had many possible solutions,
Fermat claimed that his equation was insoluble.

The Pythagorean equation and the cubic equation can be visualised in 2 or 3

dimensions. In two dimensions it is easy to add the tiles of one square to another
square to create a third bigger square.

Fermat went even further, believing that if the power of the equation is
increased further, then these equations would also have no solutions:

x + y = z
x + y = z
x + y = z
x + y = z

The mathematical short-hand for this family of insoluble equations is:

x + y = z

n>2
{ x, y, z }

According to Fermat, none of these equations could be solved, and he noted this in
the margin of his Arithmetica. To back up his theorem he had developed an
argument or mathematical proof, and following the first marginal note he scribbled
the most tantalising comment in the history of mathematics:

or to put a more commonly understood language..

It is impossible for a cube to be written as a sum of two cubes, or a fourth power to
be written as the sum of two fourth powers, or, in general, for any number which is a
power greater than the second to be written as the sum of two like powers
.I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is
too narrow to contain.

Now the race was on to rediscover Fermats proof. Trial and error showed that
Fermats Last Theorem seemed to be true, because nobody could find three whole
number solutions. But nobody could be sure that no such solutions existed.
Mathematicians would only be happy if they could find a solid proof, a reasoned
argument, something that would unequivocally show that the theorem was true.

Fermats Last Theorem became the most notorious problem in mathematics. The
more that mathematicians tried, the more they failed, and the more desirable a
solution became.

Andrew Wiles
Mathematicians aren't satisfied because they
know there are no solutions up to four million or
four billion, they really want to know that there
are no solutions up to infinity.

When the ten-year-old Andrew Wiles read about it in his

local Cambridge library, he dreamt of solving the problem
that had haunted so many great mathematicians. Little did
he or the rest of the world know that he would succeed.

Andrew Wiles was born in Cambridge, England on

April 11 1953. At the age of ten he began to attempt
to prove Fermat's last theorem using textbook
methods. He then moved on to looking at the work
of others who had attempted to prove the
conjecture. Fermat himself had proved that for n=4
the equation had no solution, and Euler then
extended Fermat's method to n=3. The problem was
that to prove the general form of the conjecture, it
does not help to prove individual cases; infinity
minus something is still infinity. Wiles had to try a
different approach in order to solve the problem.

Wiles earned a bachelors degree from Oxford

University in 1974 and a PhD from Cambridge in
1980. It was while at Cambridge that he worked with
John Coates on the arithmetic of elliptic curves.
Elliptic curves are confusingly not much like an
ellipse or a curve! They are defined by points in the
plane whose co-ordinates x and y satisfy an equation
of the form
where mu and lambda are constants, and they are
usually doughnut-shaped. When Wiles began
studying elliptic curves they were an area of

mathematics unrelated to Fermat's last theorem. But

this was soon to change. What Ribet had managed
to show, and what Frey had intuited, was that if
Fermat's last theorem were false, that is if there

were three non-zero whole numbers

a, b and c, and a whole number n > 2 so that

a + b = c,
then this would have very special consequences for
the elliptic curve
y = x(x - a)(x - b),
which is known as the Frey curve: this curve would be
unrelated to a modular form. If such an elliptic curve
existed, then the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture
would be false. Looking at this from a different
perspective we can see that if the Taniyama-Shimura
conjecture could be proved to be true, then the
curve could not exist, hence Fermat's last theorem
must be true. So to prove Fermat's last theorem,
Wiles had to prove the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture.
"You can't really focus yourself for years unless you
have undivided concentration, which too many
spectators would have destroyed"
Proving the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture was an
enormous task, one that many mathematicians
considered impossible. Wiles decided that the only
way he could prove it would be to work in secret at
his Princeton home. He still performed his lecturing
duties at the university but no longer attended
conferences or told anyone what he was working on.
This led many to believe he had finished as a
mathematician; simply run out of ideas. After six
years working alone, Wiles felt he had almost proved
the conjecture. But he needed help from a friend
called Nick Katz to examine one part of the proof. No
problems were found and the moment to announce
the proof came later that year at the Isaac Newton
Institute in Cambridge. There it was that in June 1993
Andrew Wiles announced his historic proof of
Fermat's Last Theorem.

Unfortunately for Wiles this was not the end of the story: his proof was found to contain a flaw. The
flaw in the proof cannot be simply explained; however without rectifying the error, Fermat's last
theorem would remain unsolved. After a year of effort, partly in collaboration with Richard Taylor,
Wiles managed to fix the problem by merging two approaches. Both of the approaches were on their
own inadequate, but together they were perfect. So it came to be that after 358 years and 7 years of
one man's undivided attention that Fermat's last theorem was finally solved.

Taniyama Shimura conjecture

The Taniyama-Shimura conjecture, since its proof
now sometimes known as the modularity theorem,
is very general and important conjecture (and now
theorem) connecting topology and number theory
which arose from several problems proposed by
Taniyama in a 1955 international mathematics
symposium.
In 1985, starting with a fictitious solution to
Fermat's last theorem (the Frey curve), G. Frey
showed that he could create an unusual elliptic
curve which appeared not to be modular. If the
curve were not modular, then this would show that
if Fermat's last theorem were false, then the
Taniyama-Shimura conjecture would also be false.
Furthermore, if the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture is
true, then so is Fermat's last theorem.
However, Frey did not actually prove that his curve
was not modular. The conjecture that Frey's curve
was not modular came to be called the "epsilon
conjecture," and was quickly proved by Ribet
(Ribet's theorem) in 1986, establishing a very close
link between two mathematical structures (the
Taniyama-Shimura conjecture and Fermat's last
theorem) which appeared previously to be
completely unrelated.
As of the early 1990s, most mathematicians
believed that the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture
was not accessible to proof. However, A. Wiles was
not one of these. He attempted to establish the
correspondence between the set of elliptic curves
and the set of modular elliptic curves by showing
that the number of each was the same. Wiles
accomplished this by "counting" Galois
representations and comparing them with the
number of modular forms. In 1993, after a
monumental seven-year effort, Wiles (almost)
proved the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture for
special classes of curves called semistable elliptic
curves (which correspond to elliptic curves with
squarefree conductors; Knapp 1999).

Every point on this elliptic curve is

the solution to an equation.

Wiles had tried to use horizontal Iwasawa

theory to create a so-called class number
formula, but was initially unsuccessful and
therefore used instead an extension of a result
of Flach based on ideas from Kolyvagin.
However, there was a problem with this
extension which was discovered during review
of Wiles' manuscript in September 1993.
Former student Richard Taylor came to
Princeton in early 1994 to help Wiles patch up
this error. After additional effort, Wiles
discovered the reason that the Flach/Kolyvagin
approach was failing, and also discovered that
it was precisely what had prevented Iwasawa
theory from working.
With this additional insight, Wiles was able to
successfully complete the erroneous portion of
the proof using Iwasawa theory, proving the
semistable case of the Taniyama-Shimura
conjecture (Taylor and Wiles 1995, Wiles 1995)
and, at the same time, establishing Fermat's
last theorem as a true theorem.
The existence of a proof of the full TaniyamaShimura conjecture was announced at a
conference by Kenneth Ribet on June, 21 1999
(Knapp 1999), and reported on National Public
Radio's Weekend Edition on July 31, 1999. The
proof was completed by Breuil et al. (2001)
building on the earlier work of Wiles and Taylor
(Mackenzie 1999, Morgan 1999). The best
previous published result held for all
conductors except those divisible by 27
(Conrad et al. 1999; Knapp 1999). The general
Breuil et al. proof for all elliptic curves removed
this restriction, in the process relying on Wiles'
proof for rational elliptic curves.