But I am not sure if the book covers the mistake and later correction. I has been more than a decade sine I read the book (and became a fan of the author).
Agreed. I bought it at the airport for a transatlantic flight the year it came out and started reading before lift off. Completed it before landing. Best flight ever.
I'll check that out - I loved his "The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography". Excellent introduction to cryptography.
Recent LLM dingers like the Jacobian Conjecture counterexample have challenged the efficient mathematics hypothesis. The JC counterexample was so small in degree and coefficient. It should have been a "low fruit" in the scheme of things, but alas, unpicked for 50+ years with considerable attention from good mathematicians.
With respect to FLT, my hopes have modestly increased that a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition does in fact exist, that Fermat actually had it, and that it may someday be recovered!
edit: some emphasis on modest. But let me be romantic here!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem_(book) by Simon Singh
But I am not sure if the book covers the mistake and later correction. I has been more than a decade sine I read the book (and became a fan of the author).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074rxx
One of the best books I’ve ever read.
With respect to FLT, my hopes have modestly increased that a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition does in fact exist, that Fermat actually had it, and that it may someday be recovered!
edit: some emphasis on modest. But let me be romantic here!
But agreed, that lime green is horrendous.
Posting because he's retiring this year?