Fermat's Enigma
Subtitle: the epic quest to solve the world's greatest mathematical problem
Contributors: JOHN LYNCH (Foreword)
Publisher: Anchor
Published: September 8, 1998
Language: eng
Number of pages: 336
ISBN-13: 9780385493628
First sentence: It was the most important mathematics lecture of the century.
Notes: 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.