asymptotes

Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh FAITH is reasonable, while science, to some extent, is founded on faith. These are two conclusions I made after pondering the relationship between faith and science. It was a "mathematical novel" I read recently that influenced me to undertake the exercise. The book, titled "Fermat's Enigma," was written by Simon Singh, a Ph.D. in particle physics at the University of Cambridge. It tells of the epic quest to solve Fermat's Last Theorem, regarded as the greatest mathematical problem of all times. I could say that the exercise led me to some rather startling discoveries. (Click here for a  brief explanation on Fermat's Last Theorem ) First, not everything in science has a proof. In fact, the whole of math, an abstract branch of science, is founded on statements that are so fundamental that they do not have proofs! These statements, called axioms, are either self-evidently true or else are assumed to be true. Perso...

Fermat's Last Theorem (FLT) is perhaps the most famous mathematical puzzle of all time. It was formulated as a conjecture by Pierre de Fermat in 1637 and was only proven in 1995 by Andrew Wiles. FLT states that no three positive integers  a ,  b , and  c  can satisfy the equation  a n  +  b n  =  c n    [1] for any integer value of  n  greater than 2. A very interesting fact about FLT is how Fermat introduced it to the world. He wrote the following on the margin of the book Arithmetica : I have discovered a truly marvelous proof that it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second into two like powers. This margin is too narrow to contain it. With this seemingly casual and yet bold statement, Fermat issued a challenge to the great mathematical minds of his time (which included Blaise Pascal) and of the three cen...