Fermat's Last Theorem

By kasey.fritz4
  • 600 BCE

    Pythagoras

    Pythagoras lived in the 6th century. He developed the idea of numerical logic and studied the relationships between numbers.

  • Pierre de Fermat's Birth

    (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2017)

  • Arithmetica by Diophantus of Alexandria (c. 250 CE)

    Fermat wrote in his copy of Arithmetica, "It is impossible for a cube to be a sum of two cubes, a fourth power to be a sum of two fourth powers, or in general for any number that is a power greater than the second to be the sum of two like powers. I have discovered a truly remarkable proof [of this theorem], but this margin is too small to contain it.” (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2017).

  • Pierre de Fermat's Death

    He never published any of his work before he died (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2017).

  • Sophia Germaine

    Her work on Fermat's Theorem later became know as Germaine's Theorem. She came up with 2 cases: Case 1: None of x, y, z is divisible by n.
    Case 2: One and only one of x, y, z is divisible by n. (School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1996)

  • Euler

    Euler attempts to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. He used the method of infinite descent (School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1996).

  • Adrien-Marie Legendre

    Legendre proved case 2(ii) for n=5 (School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1996).

  • Lejeune Dirichlet

    Dirichlet proved case 2(i) for n=14 (School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1996).

  • Gabriel Lamé

    Lamé proved n=7 (School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1996).

  • Eduard Kummer

    Kummer proved Fermat's Last Theorem for regular primes (School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1996).

  • Failed Attempts

    From 1908-1912, there were over 1000 failed attempts to solve Fermet's Last Theorem with prize offerings (School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1996).

  • Gerd Faltings

    Faltings proved that for every n > 2 there are at most a finite number of coprime integers x, y, z with x^n + y^n = z^n (School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1996).

  • Shimura-Taniyama-Weil Conjecture

    A connection was made between the Shimura-Taniyama- Weil Conjecture and Fermat's Last Theorem. All semistable elliptic curves are modular. It was said that modular elliptic curves should imply Fermat's Last Theorem, but it proved otherwise (Wiles, 1995).

  • Andrew Wiles

    He presented a proof of the Shimura-Taniyama-Weil conjecture. The proof had a mistake in it, but it led him to a proof of Fermat’s last theorem. It was published in 1995 (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2017).

  • Computers solve up to n=4,000,000

    (School of Mathematics and Statistics University of St Andrews, Scotland, 1996)