Trevor Pythagoras

Fermat was a 17th century mathematician who provided a number of theorems and some of their proofs. The most intriguing of hi theorems is Fermat’s Last Theorem which is as follows:

the equation

has no integer (whole number) solutions for n>2

For example a solution for n=2 is x=3, y=4, z = 5 since

however the theorem states that for any n larger than 2 a set of integer solutions such as these cannot be found.

Despite the simplicity of this theorem it took 300 years until 1994 for it to be solved by Andrew Wiles using advanced maths.

A fascinating book on the problem is called Fermat’s Last Theorem (by Simon Singh) which goes through the history of the problem and many of the people who have attempted to solve it.