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

Authors: Singh, Simon
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
BISAC/Subject: SCI043000, MAT015000, MAT026000
ISBN: 9780525435327, Related ISBNs: 0385493622, 0525435328, 9780385493628, 9780525435327
Classification: Non-Fiction
Number of pages: 336,
Audience: General/trade
Synopsis: 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.
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