History of Fermat's Last Theorem

  • Pierre Fermat's Life

    Lived from: 1601-1655.
  • Fermat's Last Theorem

    States that there are no natural numbers (1, 2, 3,…) x, y, and z such that x^n + y^n = z^n, in which n is a natural number greater than 2.
  • Samuel(Fermat's Son) - Fermat's Last Theorem

    In 1670 Fermat’s son Samuel published a new edition of Diophantus including his father’s notes. One of the problems in Diophantus said write a given square as the sum of two squares. Fermat wrote a note next to this problem saying it is impossible, in general, to divide any power beyond the square into powers of the same degree, but the proof he found is too large for the margin of the page. Fermat’s Last Theorem : There is no solution to when n>2
  • Euler- Fermat's Last Theorem

    He was the first mathematician to make progress on Fermat's famous problem (Fermat, himself, provided a proof for n=4). Euler was responsible for finding a proof for n=3 and for finding a method of proof using imaginary numbers.
  • Sophie Germain- Fermat's Last Theorem

    Germain's work led to Fermat's Last Theorem being broken into two cases: FLT I: x^p + y^p = z^p has no integer solutions for which x, y, and z are relatively prime to p, i.e. in which none of x, y, and z are divisible by p; FLT II: x^p + y^p = z^p has no integer solutions for which one and only one of the three numbers is divisible by p.
  • Andrew Wiles

    Professor at Princeton. Solved Fermat's Last Theorem