Fermat's Last Theorem

[osprey_archer]

A couple days ago silksieve linked a trailer for Fermat’s Room, a Spanish mathematical thriller, which is so cool I though I would pass it on. There are subtitles if you don’t speak Spanish.

This combines a lot of my favorite things—movies, Spanish, people with intense and passionate interests (in math, in this case), and esoteric historical knowledge. The Fermat of the title was a French civil servant by day and a rogue mathematician at night, who scribbled bits and pieces of mathematical proofs as marginalia in the books in his library.

His most famous theorem—Fermat’s last theorem, which was solved in 1994 by a British mathematician named Andrew Wiles—states that, for any number n greater than 2, x^n + y^n is not equal to z^n. Evidently Wiles presented his proof at the very end of a very dry two-day-long lecture, during which his audience grew in size and breathless expectation until Wiles set down his chalk and said “This proves Fermat’s last theorem,” and the mathematicians cheered like Packers fans.

It makes me wish I was a math geek.

Speaking of math geeks, Erdos has to be the definition of an eccentric mathematician. He traveled the globe, spreading mathematical enlightenment, helping colleagues prove conjectures, never staying after a theorem had been conquered. The Lone Ranger of mathematics.

Comments

[exuberantself.livejournal.com]

Erdos is the man. Also, the Fermat anecdote made me happy, what with the audience of serious mathematicians cheering (and, you know, possibly painting theorums on their chests).

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

*dies laughing* That just MADE MY NIGHT.

Here's to hoping all those mathematicians look like Charlie on Numb3rs.