Marilyn vos Savant Steps In It…

Marilyn vos Savant is widely-known for writing a column and giving answers to puzzles of all sorts... and also famous for sometimes having her answers challenged, only to have the critics often embarrassed — famously so in the instance of the Monty Hall problem, but occasionally with other problems as well (she’s also had to correct or refine given answers on various occasions).

I didn’t recall however her controversy over Andrew Wiles’ proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem ’til I read the below brief passage in David Wells' “The Penguin Book of Curious and Interesting Mathematics”:

“Less than five months after Wiles’s lecture, she published a book, The World’s Most Famous Math Problem (The Proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem and other Mathematical Mysteries), in which she claimed that non-Euclidean geometry is unsound, and so therefore is Wiles’s proof, because he uses non-Euclidean geometry. She also claimed that his proof depends on developments in mathematics that are relatively recent and poorly understood, and she encouraged her readers to try to ‘demolish Einstein’s theories of relativity’ by proving the parallel postulate.”

Wow, pretty harsh… I’ve never read her short (80-page) book, but as best I can tell, the consensus of professional mathematicians is more uniformly critical of it than some of her other writings; one mathematician calling the book “pure drivel” (and this is despite Martin Gardner writing the Foreward, initially calling the volume "a delightful, informative, and accurate book”).

IF I understand correctly, Marilyn did retract much of her criticism at a later date?

I recommend a very interesting read, by the way, about the whole Gardner/vos Savant relationship here:

http://tinyurl.com/y7vpy3ma  (link corrected, I think?)

Anyway, if anyone out there is more directly familiar with this particular controversy (and book), and cares to add anything further about it, I’d be curious to hear.

An Anniversary

24 years ago today Andrew Wiles announced “I think I’ll stop here” and the rest, as they say, dear mathematicians, is history:

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/24/us/at-last-shout-of-eureka-in-age-old-math-mystery.html?pagewanted=1

"The Heart of Fermat's Last Theorem"

 Another video today... this time a wonderful Numberphile effort to pass along a sense of the proof at "The Heart of Fermat's Last Theorem":

Smiles For Wiles

No great surprise, I suspect, that Andrew Wiles has won the 2016 Abel Prize for his untiring work on Fermat's Last Theorem... richly-deserved:
http://www.abelprize.no/

...coverage in Nature for the award:
http://tinyurl.com/jaysfco

It was almost 13 years ago that Wiles ended a Cambridge lecture to wild applause, with, "I think I'll stop here," having just concluded his monumental proof in public for the first time ever! (7+ years in-the-formulation, of a 350+year-old problem he'd been obsessed with since childhood... the proof required some later technical corrections).

Also inspired by Wiles' award, this brief, interesting post from Michael Harris:
https://mathematicswithoutapologies.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/mathematical-prizes-and-the-oppressive-hierarchy/

I'd love to take a moment to explain Wiles' wonderful proof to you all, but I just don't quite have room for it in this post. ;-)
However, in a video of the actual Abel ceremony, starting at about the 10:20 mark, Alex Bellos offers a 15-min. explanation of Wiles' work):

http://www.abelprisen.no/artikkel/vis.html?tid=67064

"I Think I'll Stop Here"

Andrew Wiles

Sunday (June 23rd) was the 20th anniversary of Andrew Wiles' 3rd talk at Cambridge's Isaac Newton Institute wherein he ended with "I think I'll stop here," to wild applause, having just finished a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem (to be later modified/patched). Plus.maths.org were among those on the Web noting the anniversary:

http://plus.maths.org/content/very-old-problem-turns-20

 I've previously linked to this beautiful, moving 50-minute documentary/tribute to Wiles' accomplishment by BBC's Horizon show... if you've never seen it before make time for it... THAT'S an order! ;-) (...coincidentally, this documentary was done by Simon Singh, subject of yesterday's post.)

Saturday Snippets

A little weekend fare...:

1) Just discovered that David Wells' great "Prime Numbers: The Most Mysterious Figures In Math" book is available as a free download here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/131913331/Prime-Numbers-the-Most-Mysterious-Figures-in-Math-D-Wells

This is a great resource on primes.

2) Listen to math writer Marcus du Sautoy briefly expound (less than 2 minutes) on why Andrew Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is the "most important British innovation of the 20th century" here:

http://www.topbritishinnovations.org/PastInnovations/ProofofFermatsLastTheorem.aspx

3) From the brief to the extended... tangential to math but too good not to pass along… the 2-hour "2013 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: The Existence of Nothing;" cosmology/philosophy discussion with 5 participants, Richard Gott, Jim Holt, Lawrence Krauss, Charles Seife and Eva Silverstein, moderated by Neil deGrasse Tyson (a real mix of ideas to chew on):




http://www.amnh.org/explore/amnh.tv/%28category%29/52915

ADDENDUM: I now have an interview up with prolific writer Clifford Pickover over at the MathTango blog:

http://mathtango.blogspot.com/2013/03/clifford-pickover-one-man-carnival.html

Fermat's Last Theorem Used in Proof

For any greater than is irrational...  

A demonstration of Fermat's Last Theorem being used in a very efficient ("charming") proof of the above:

http://tinyurl.com/2bof7l6

(...this is almost too simple)