Like many math students, I had dreams of mathematical greatness. I thought I was close once. A difficult algebra problem in college kept me working late into the night. After hours of struggle, I felt ...

What starts as a simple counting problem with colored beads reveals one of number theory's most elegant results. This is Fermat's Little Theorem, discovered not through abstract algebra, but through ...

The proof Wiles finally came up with (helped by Richard Taylor) was something Fermat would never have dreamed up. It tackled the theorem indirectly, by means of an enormous bridge that mathematicians ...

Mathematicians have shown Fermat's Last Theorem can be proved using only a small portion of Grothendieck's work. Specifically, the theorem can be justified using "finite order arithmetic." Fermat's ...

On June 23, 1993, the mathematician Andrew Wiles gave the last of three lectures detailing his solution to Fermat’s last theorem, a problem that had remained unsolved for three and a half centuries.

Fermat’s Last Theorem is so simple to state, but so hard to prove. Though the 350-year-old claim is a straightforward one about integers, the proof that University of Oxford mathematician Andrew Wiles ...

Google’s Doodles have been brainier lately, and Wednesday’s Doodle is no exception. The doodle features a mathematical equation scribbled onto a chalkboard over the “erased” Google logo. What is this ...

Simon Singh likes to work against the grain. He decides to write about a mathematical problem that gained iconic status because of a teasing, 300-year-old note in the margin of a book, but won't seem ...

Fermat's Last Theorem—the idea that a certain simple equation had no solutions— went unsolved for nearly 350 years until Oxford mathematician Andrew Wiles created a proof in 1995. Now, Case Western ...

Mathematicians have figured out how to expand the reach of a mysterious bridge connecting two distant continents in the mathematical world. The proof Wiles finally came up with (helped by Richard ...