Maths guy??

[mycats]

sorry about the title lol. I read something once about a man who apparently created a brilliant theory (something to do with maths) but he was killed in a duel before he could work it all the way through properly. Aparently it could have been a huge breakthrough or something (lol I know, I'm confusing you with all my technical jargon here eh?) Does anybody have any idea who the guy was??

[jake-the-peg]

This is Fermats last theorum. It's easy to understand but resisted the best minds for 350 years. Consequently maths professors were forever getting letters from crazies saying they'd proved it.

Pythagorus's theorom says the square of the long side of a triangle is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides - There are whole numbers that this works for e.g
3,4,5 (3 squared -9, plus 4 squared -16 = 5 squared -25)

Fermat said that this only works for squares that there are no sets of integers a,b,c where say a cubed +b cubed = c cubed - or to the fourth power or any orther power only 2.

This was finally proved (to the relief of maths professors) in 1994 and required very state of the art maths.

So basically Fermat was bluffing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat's_last_the orem

[maxi29]

Evariste Galois, died at the age of 20 in a dual. Stayed up all night writing down his theories on equations.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galois_theory

[mycats]

Thats him!!! Thank you maxi, thats been driving me mad, could not remember his name.
And you get stars too Jake because you're reply was interesting, thank you.

[jake-the-peg]

I think they might be "bound up".

I believe Galois' work was in the area of Fermats last theorum and I'm sure I've heard people erroneously tell of Fermat writing that he had the proof and then going out to be killed in a duel.

Thus mixing the two mathematicians together

[WoWo]

I read this book a while ago...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/18411 57910/qid=1151581460/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_ xgl/202-9099212-9722257

A great read, as I remember the problem had been around since greek times and Fermats involvement was that in a margin of one of his note books he wrote that he had solved the problem. However he said it was too long to fit in the margin, no evidence of the proof was ever found.

[JustSia]

Considering that Andrew Wiles� proof required a development of a very complex branch of mathematics Fermat�s Theorem is still open to solutions although, of course, without the money prize. Mycats, you still have a chance to make history;)

The argument is that since Fermat was unlikely to know about M-theory and other future advances in mathematics his explanation would have been slightly less complex. And based on his other works most of the people agree that he had the solution for this problem, which is why I wonder, Jake, where did the claim that he was bluffing come from.

Re: Galois, if only more 20 yo�s nowadays were as passionate about their State, culture, arts, science as he was.