Word: fermat
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About 350 years ago, a French amateur mathematician named Pierre de Fermat scratched a devilishly tricky problem in the margin of a Greek mathematical text. Then he added, "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof ((of the theorem)), which this margin is too small to contain." Did he really have the answer? The attempts of generations of scientists to find out have made Fermat's Last Theorem the El Dorado of math problems. Now, at long last, an assistant professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University seems to have broken the code. Last month at Bonn's Max Planck Institute, Yoichi Miyaoka...
Since before Euclid's time it has been known that in the equation A 2+B 2=C 2, if A and B are whole numbers, then C can also be a whole number -- for example, 5 2+12 2=13 2. Fermat postulated that if the same equation is taken to a power higher than 2, such as A 3+B 3=C 3, then C can never be a whole number. Miyaoka has apparently found out why by using an esoteric branch of mathematics called arithmetic geometry. Scientists are now awaiting the first draft of his manuscript...
...more theorem from Fermat...
When he hit on his bathroom solution of Fermat's equation, Krieger at once cabled to Göttingen asking whether the 100,000-mark prize was still there. Back came the answer: "Preis besteht noch" (Prize still stands). Krieger doubted, however, that Adolf Hitler would allow the money to leave Germany, especially since the claimant was conspicuously non-Aryan. A matter which he apparently overlooked was that the prize is offered for proof of the theorem, whereas his solution, if valid, would constitute disproof...
Last week Herr Krieger made headlines once more by announcing that he would reveal the values for x, y and z which would solve the Fermat equation. They turned out to be 1,324; 731; and 1,961. He would not reveal n-the power-but said it was less than 20. An astute reporter from the New York Times, no baby in mathematics himself, pored over this equation: 1,324 n +731 n =1,961 n . The reporter saw that the first number raised to any power at all would end in either 6 or 4, the second raised...