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Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem |  | Author: SIMON SINGH
Creator: JOHN LYNCH
Publisher: Anchor
List Price: $14.95
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Seller: betterworldbooks_
Rating:  259 reviews
Sales Rank: 133205
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st Anchor Books ed
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 0385493622
Dewey Decimal Number: 512.74
EAN: 9780385493628
ASIN: 0385493622
Publication Date: September 8, 1998
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
When Andrew Wiles of Princeton University announced a solution of Fermat's last theorem in 1993, it electrified the world of mathematics. After a flaw was discovered in the proof, Wiles had to work for another year--he had already labored in solitude for seven years--to establish that he had solved the 350-year-old problem. Simon Singh's book is a lively, comprehensible explanation of Wiles's work and of the star-, trauma-, and wacko-studded history of Fermat's last theorem. Fermat's Enigma contains some problems that offer a taste of the math, but it also includes limericks to give a feeling for the goofy side of mathematicians.
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 259
 Number Theory for Amateurs October 29, 2009
Peter Geraghty (San Francisco CA USA)
I've dipped into a lot of books for "the general reader" about mathematics. I've hardly finished any of them, not because I'm not interested in math, but because I would get bogged down in.. in what? The mathematics, of course. For those of you who are still haunted by Mr. Shepherd back in high school and still want to know why he spluttered and his eyes popped out when he was writing equations on the board, then this would be a great book for you. There's the human interest story; Andrew Wiles sweating bullets for months because his solution, on which he had worked for seven years, to a 350 year old problem, was falling apart. There's historical romance; eccentric mathematicians and their passions. And by golly, there's mathematics, delivered so smoothly that I hardly broke a sweat over the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture.
This is a beautifully put together book that is a pleasure to read.
 Simply Magnificent! September 18, 2009
Youssef Ragab
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book is about the history of one of the most outstanding problems in the history of mathematics namely; Fermat's last theorem. Fermat's famous theorem can be understood by middle school pupils but it's proof has persistently eluded history's most powerful minds for over 350 years. Singh's master piece follows Fermat's theorem from its very roots some 2000 years before the birth of Fermat to its final proof by Andrew Wills in 1993. Singh literally transport's the reader from ancient Greece, to third century Alexandria, to seventeenth century France, to second world war Europe, to the boots of Andrew Wills in pursuit of this unique theorem. Three centuries of rich history are beautifully woven into a thrilling tale. The book covers a wide assortment of very interesting topics including; Pythagoras and his secret society, Euclid and his elements, Fermat and his legacy, Euler and his attempts, women in mathematics, Hilbert and his problems, Turing and his machines, Wills and his determined struggle and much more all in clear and vivid narration readily accessible to the general reader. The book establishes a tender balance between daunting detail and frustrating superficialism; an impressive task considering the highly complicated mathematics included. The author gives readers a new perspective to the world of mathematics. All said, this is one of the best popular science books I ever read. It gripped my attention from the moment I flipped its front cover to the moment I put it down a couple of days later. Simply magnificent!
A great read for mathematicians and non-mathematicians alike September 10, 2009
RocketMonkey (New York, NY)
Simon Singh is among the very best science non-fiction writers. Though I am interested in the underlying subject matter, Mr. Singh's treatment of the material never fails to draw the reader in, regardless of their level with the underlying components.
At the heart of this story is an amazingly simple equation (which I will not state here). Its a testament to the beauty of mathematics, that something so simple could be quite so complicated. My hats off to Andrew Wiles for proving the theorem, it is surely an event for the ages. And under Simon Singh's careful direction, this story turns epic.
Anyone with a passing appreciation to mathematics owes themselves a read of this book.
Um livro obrigatório (portuguese review) June 15, 2009
Jose Antonio Cruz (Lisboa, Portugal)
Não tendo uma encadernação e paginação óptimas, não deixa de ser um ponto de referência para todos os que querem saber e orientarem-se melhor na História da Matemática. Também existe traduzido, mas na língua original é para mim obrigatório.
A great popular book on mathematics June 7, 2009
Nona (CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book may very well be one of the best popular books on mathematics written in this generation. It covers the story of Fermat's Last Theorem, which was one of the most famous unsolved mathematical problems until its resolution in the mid 1990s by Andrew Wiles, with some assistance from Richard Taylor. While this book does devote a considerable amount of time to the achievements of Wiles, a good portion of the book covers other mathematicians (and there were many) who tackled FLT.
You don't actually need to know a lot of mathematics to read this book. It's not possible to understand even a (mathematically precise) outline of the proof of FLT without a lot of training, so instead Singh approaches the task of explaining lots of difficult mathematics through analogy. (Actually, I would bet that even the author does not understand the technical details of Wiles' proof, so he was forced by necessity to take the approach he does in writing about FLT.) In this, he succeeds marvelously, as we get an overview of what mathematicians tried to do to prove FLT, even if he doesn't explain the mathematical details. His task is made considerably easier by the historical drama of the many fascinating characters in mathematical history.
This book contains an extensive number of drawings to help the reader visualize various mathematical concepts, as well as many black and white photographs of the people covered in the book. Just as an added bonus, there is a copy of one of the opening pages of the proof of FLT that Wiles published, and it might give the reader an idea of the technical difficulty of his solution.
Singh does a great job of portraying mathematics as a vibrant, intellectually active branch of human thought, which probably is not the image most people have of the subject. There is little doubt in my mind that this book has inspired many readers to go on and find out more about the world of mathematics.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 259
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