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 he had a proof too long to fit in the margin. Can you find three numbers that break the rule, or see why none exist?
Reveal the answer
None exist, but proving it took over three and a half centuries. Fermat's claimed proof was never found and is widely doubted to have existed. The theorem was finally proved in 1994 by Andrew Wiles, using techniques from elliptic curves and modular forms that didn't even exist in Fermat's lifetime — after Wiles worked on it in secret for seven years and had to fix a gap in his first attempt.
— Andrew Wiles, Modular Elliptic Curves and Fermat's Last Theorem — Annals of Mathematics, 1995