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Andrew Wiles: 2 ideas and puzzles worth knowing

2 ideas and puzzles from Andrew Wiles, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• A 358-year-old math problem was solved in a professor's attic

  Pierre de Fermat claimed in 1637 to have a proof too large for a margin to hold, then never wrote it down. Andrew Wiles worked in near-total secrecy for seven years to prove Fermat…

  — Andrew Wiles, Modular Elliptic Curves and Fermat's Last Theorem

• A margin note claimed a proof that took the world 358 years to find

  In 1637, Pierre de Fermat scrawled in the margin of a book that no three positive whole numbers a, b, c can satisfy a^n + b^n = c^n for any whole number n greater than 2 — and that…

  — Andrew Wiles, Modular Elliptic Curves and Fermat's Last Theorem

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