Pierre de Fermat was a 17th-century French lawyer and mathematician. Math was apparently more of a hobby for Fermat, and so one of history’s greatest math minds communicated many of his theorems through casual correspondence. 
He made claims without proving them, leaving them to be proven by other mathematicians decades, or even centuries, later. The most challenging of these has become known as Fermat’s Last Theorem.
It’s a simple one to write. There are many trios of integers (x,y,z) that satisfy x²+y²=z². These are known as the Pythagorean Triples, like (3,4,5) and (5,12,13). Now, do any trios (x,y,z) satisfy x³+y³=z³? The answer is no, and that’s Fermat’s Last Theorem.
Fermat famously wrote the Last Theorem by hand in the margin of a textbook, along with the comment that he had a proof, but could not fit it in the margin. For centuries, the math world has been left wondering if Fermat really had a valid proof in mind.
Flash forward 330 years after Fermat’s death to 1995, when British mathematician Sir Andrew Wiles finally cracked one of history’s oldest open problems. For his efforts, Wiles was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and was awarded a unique honorary plaque in lieu of the Fields Medal, since he was just above the official age cutoff to receive a Fields Medal.
Wiles managed to combine new research in very different branches of math in order to solve Fermat’s classic number theory question. One of these topics, Elliptic Curves, was completely undiscovered in Fermat’s time, leading many to believe Fermat never really had a proof of his Last Theorem.
Πηγή: popularmechanics
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