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Fermat's Last Theorem | 
| Author: Simon Singh
Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £4.49
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Avg. Customer Rating:  127 reviews
Sales Rank: 1974
Media: Paperback
Edition: New edition
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 1841157910
Dewey Decimal Number: 509
EAN: 9781841157917
ASIN: 1841157910
Publication Date: June 5, 2002
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
When Cambridge mathematician Andrew Wiles announced a solution for 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 laboured 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 colourful history that has build up around Fermat's last theorem over the years. The book contains some problems that offer a taste for the maths, but it also includes limericks to give a feeling for the quirkier side of mathematicians.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 122 more reviews...
 Promising...but disappointing in the end October 28, 2008
The book looks like the author is just postponing the end of the story just repeating and repeating the same ideas. The part of the proof and the attempts to correct the proof are quite disappointing because they are too much redundant. Moreover Singh is sliding some e-mails which don't add anything to the story and are quite "impenetrable". I do not like this way of writing. The author pretends not to use math symbology and math concepts beyond very basic ones, and then he lets go concepts like Hecke algebra, Euler system, "quasi-automorphic representations", i.e. without giving any clue about what they mean.
I think it leaves too much maths unexplained (and in a book about a math conundrum you understand it is a big problem!); I would have loved to see the same ingenuity Derbyshire put in his wonderful "Prime Obsession".
Mathematics as you've never seen it before May 21, 2008
I was never a fan of maths at school. It did not come easily to me and I failed to see the relevance of trigonometry to my everyday life.
I say this so you realise I am not some sort of science geek who was best friends with a calculator. That's because I found this book absolutely fascinating. It made me laugh 3 times in the first 20 pages alone!
What Simon Singh does is through Fermat's puzzle describe the history of mathematics from Pythagoras right up to the 1990's. To the layman names like Euclid put in the mind very dull old guys, but they are brought to life with fascinating anecdotes. For example there's the tortured young French mathematician Galois who is dead by 20, his final mathematical theories frantically scribbled down before a dual. Then there's the story that Pythagoras himself drowned a man when he discovered a certain type of number he objected to!
All of this is carefully woven into the story of Andrew Wiles' life long obsession to prove Fermat's last theorem a puzzle that had foxed the whole world for over 350 years!
Everything is explained in a way that it can be digested by someone who has only a passing interest in maths and as a whole is a remarkable book.
 Interesting, exciting, challenging; great read May 20, 2008
What I loved the most about this book was it's timeline-structure. Dating back to the Pythagorean ages to the present; I thought this was a brilliant idea. The book is full of interesting stories of what the most famous mathematicians in the world had experienced during their profession.
The book reaches out to people on many levels:
Women:
The story told about Sophie Germain (born in 1776), the daughter of a merchant whom outside of her work shared a great passion for Mathematics. However during this age, female mathematicians were frowned upon, and so to study at the Ecole, she took the identity of a former student at the Academy named August Le Blanc. The academy was unaware that he had left Paris and continued to print lecture notes and problems for him. Germain had been submitting the answers to these problems under his name. As her work progressed she had made a remarkable breakthrough in revealing the proof to Fermat's Last Theorem; and with the help of Gauss, one of the most famous mathematicians. They would keep in regular contact regarding mathematical problems until the day where she had submitted this breakthrough to him, she had also revealed that she in fact, is a woman; and received an astonishing response from Gauss's overwhelming reaction (In the best way possible) - Germain had become an icon for female mathematicians.
Mathematicians/People who love maths:
Appendixes located in the back of the book where readers with a higher level of mathematical knowledge can read further into the problem with more examples.
Musicians:
mathematical properties of plucking a string to achieve different tones.
Etc.
I remember particularly being shocked about Pythagoras's shame. Where one of his students had discovered the concept of irrational numbers, and as Pythagoras failed to understand this concept, he had sent for the student to be drowned, and claimed irrational numbers as the devil's work; absolutely shameful of such a famous and respected mathematician. Again, this could possibly reach the interest of historians.
There are so many aspects of the book to talk about but I need to keep this short and sweet. Overall the book was a huge success and covered enough of mathematical history to engage the reader in the problem and allow them to enjoy it at the same time. However I did notice that a lot of other significant people in mathematics were not mentioned, like Muhammad bin Mks al-Khwrizm+ - who discovered Algebra mathematics. I also feel that towards the end of the book where the story of Andrew Wiles's steps to solving the theorem was slightly lengthy, and to be completely honest, started to bore me (Hence my 4 star rating).
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in mathematics, history, or simply like mysteries and puzzles.
Better than the Da Vinci Code! March 20, 2008
This is a very well-written book: high-level mathematics made accessible to all. It is a true adventure story - and if you are also interested in finding out what exactly it is about mathematics that motivates mathematicians - then this is the book to read. Highly recommended.
Fermat's Last Theorem January 10, 2008
an interesting book about Mathematics and about mathematicians both the famous and not so famous
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