Modular elliptic curves and fermats last theorem homepages of. The only prerequisites needed to follow the proof are some high school algebra and the ability to take derivatives of products and quotients of polynomials. This book will describe the recent proof of fermat s last the orem by andrew wiles, aided by richard taylor, for graduate. Here the detail of the proof announced in the first volume is fully exposed. In 1986 gerhard frey places fermat last theorem at elliptic curve. When one supercube made up of unit cubes is subtracted from a. In our final lecture we give an overview of the proof of fermats last theorem. When andrew john wiles was 10 years old, he read eric temple bells the. Nigel boston university of wisconsin madison the proof. Jiang and wiles proofs on fermat last theorem4 vixra. What follows, therefore, is a sketch of much simpler and indeed more classical ideas related to fermat s last theorem. Using some clever com mutative algebra, wiles obtains conditions for such a map to be an isomorphism.
In particular, this finally yields a proof of fermats last theorem. Karl rubin uc irvine fermat s last theorem ps breakfast, march 2007 23 37. After all, professor wiles had already won almost every other prize for his 1995 proof of fermat s last theorem, the most notorious problem in the history of mathematics. Why its so impressive that fermats last theorum has been. Given the right angled triangle below, we know from pythagoras that the sides a, b and c are related by the equation. Wiles announces his proof in three lectures on modular forms, elliptic curves, and galois representations at a workshop at the newton institue in cambridge, england. The only case of fermat s last theorem for which fermat actually wrote down a proof is for the case n 4. Easier aspects of fermat s last theorem it goes without saying that the nonexpert will have a tough time getting to grips with andrew wiles proof. The work on this paper was supported by an nsf grant. Wiles announces his proof in three lectures on modular forms, elliptic curves, and galois representations at a workshop at the newton institue in. It can bepresented in a very elementary way, and it is interesting in itself. The leading thought throughout the derivation is illustrated in fig. This deep result allowed him to reduce fermats last theorem to the shimurataniyama conjecture. Wiless proof of fermats last theorem is a proof by british mathematician andrew wiles of a special case of the modularity theorem for elliptic curves.
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