Vodeći nas kroz istoriju matematike i teorije brojeva, Singh pripoveda uzbudljivu priču o problemu koji je mučio matematičare od 17. veka, pa sve do oktobra 1994. godine, kada je Andrew Wiles konačno kompletirao svoj dokaz pretpostavke koju je formulisao Pierre de Fermat 1637. godine.

Ovaj "princ svih amatera", koji je radio izolovan od matematičke zajednice, uživao je u rešavanju problema, ali nije se trudio da ponudi potpunija objašnjenja, često izazivajući kolege da ih dokažu i pokažu da su do More...

What a fun book this was (thanks, Trevor, for the recommendation)! There are many reasons I think I like (good) nonfiction -- a sense of direct relevance, gravitas, frequent insights into the workings of the universe (and people), but mostly for knowledge narcs -- high levels of information density served up into an intriguing package by someone else who has undertaken the heavy lifting (research, organization, thinking). So, here in Singh's work I get a solid lay understanding not only of the p More...

If you don't think math can be sexy and exciting, then you ought to give Singh's book a read.

By the time Pierre de Fermat - sometime civil servant and occasional brilliant mathematician - left this earth, he'd left an indelible mark on the 17th century. His work with Pascal on "laws of chance" (considered by some an oxymoron) was groundbreaking and enduring, as was his contribution to proto-calculus.

Fermat, though, was very often remembered for something he wrote in contrast with Pythaoreas' fam More...

Math was one of my favorite subjects in school. I loved learning algebra and I enjoyed calculus in high school and college. I also take pleasure in doing logic puzzles now and then. But I can't imagine myself doing it for a living, filling my brain with numbers day in and day out.

So it's fascinating for me to read about people throughout history who did do this, who devoted their lives in search of mathematical truths. The author explains clearly why figuring out absolute mathematical proof is i More...

I guess the author does a reasonable job. But when I reached the end, I still didn't feel I understood at all how the proof worked. Probably that's just because it's so bloody hard. I got a lot more though out of Prime Obsession, Derbyshire's book on the Riemann Hypothesis, where the author opens up the box and shows you some of the actual math...

Finished. I have to admit I got completely lost in the last fourth of the book, where he discussed the modular somethings (equations, perhaps). It still is s really great book though.

**re-reading**

After 'White Dog', I strongly felt the need for something neat. Re-reading this is like plunging into a cool ocean.


______original review: ______
After I had finished his Code Book, I picked this one up. I always loved maths in school...trying to find a patterns, solving the problems etc but I major in p More...

Avevo gi�� avuto modo di leggere un libro di Singh e mi ero reso conto di quanto riuscisse a rendere piacevole e comprensibile gli argomenti trattati nonostante non fossero decisamente materia di discussione quotidiana.

In questo libro ci racconta in maniera avvincente la storia dietro quello che forse �� stato il problema matematico pi�� famoso di sempre, come �� nato, chi �� caduto tentando di risolverlo nel corso dei secoli e di chi finalmente, non senza problemi, �� riuscito a sconfiggerlo do More...

Fermat's Enigma is sub-titled 'The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem'. On his death, Fermat left behind a number of cryptic notes concerning his findings but without providing the proofs which he was too impatient to write out. Eventually all but one were proven, that one being the simple looking formula which came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem. Singh follows the 350 year search for a proof that culminated in an 8 year dedicated search bt Andrew Wiles and incor More...

Absolutely fantastic.

The descriptions of all the maths and discoveries in this book are nothing short of joyful, and I felt so excited to be reading all of it. The book explains and shows why math is so amazing, how it is a divine language that describes something (i.e., number properties and their relationships) that exists outside of the physical world, how mathematicians are then often more in search of a truth in the real sense of the word than in search of a practical application or an expl More...

Lectura en 2012

Este año tomé nuevamente el libro del Enigma de Fermat, símplemente porque me gustó bastante

Las matemáticas fueron una de esas cosas con las que siempre tuve un romance eterno. Leyendo nuevamente pude recordar esos episodios en clases en que el maestro en turno llegó un día y anotó este mismo teorema en la pizarra. Nos dejó toda la clase tratando de solucionarlo y obviamente al final nos informó que el mismo no estaba resuelto (o al menos eso recuerdo, porque en ese año ya debería More...

http://iandbooks.wordpress.com

In a way this book “Fermat’s Last Theorem” is a fantasy come true. To be able to read about complex Mathematics in a story book style is something that was possible only in this book by Simon Singh. Before I picked up this book I had no idea about Fermat’s last theorem or its significance. I just read the summary on the back page and felt like picking up the book and once I started reading it, there was no stopping it, though I did skipped over complex mathematical More...

I read this book in about four sittings including a session last night that went from 1am to 4am. It is not often that I am moved to read books this late at night. It is the suspense of this book that makes it hard to put down. I could safely conclude that this was the first ever substantial mathematics story I've read and by the sounds of it, it is the best out there. I would consider myself more of a qualitative guy than a numbers guy. However this is not entirely true, because as a child and More...

If you buy the latest Jilly Cooper instead of this you WILL go to hell!


This one languished on my bookshelf for the best part of a year as I was too scared to pick it up & start it. What held me back is what will probably put a lot of other potential readers off trying it - the boring old "I'm no good at maths" argument. Although my maths education is probably little above average (a good O Level and a terrible A Level, after which I rallied somewhat to obtain a reasonable HNC maths module) i More...

This is the kind of book that we non mathematical minds can easily digest and love. It gives you an epic scope of the number of minds that it takes to build new ideas. I doubt if Fermat had actually solved this theorem correctly, but this is impossible to prove. Fermat's theorem however was not impossible to prove! It was solved! Thanks to the efforts of many men (and women!) over many lifetimes and one final man who had the determination and persistence to finish the unthinkable. This book has More...

On his way home from school in Cambridge, England in the early 60s, Andrew Wiles would pick up a copy of E.T. Bell's book, "The Last Problem", from the local public library. The focus of "The Last Problem" is on the history and challenge of what seemed to be a fairly straight-forward arithmetic equation:

x^n + y^n = z^n where no three positive integers, x, y, and z can correctly solve this
equation for any value of n that is greater than two.

This equation was first described by the amateur mathe More...

I picked this book off of my cousin's shelf and read it in the two days that I've been in New York, despite it being significantly thick (almost three hundred pages, which is much larger a book than I ever try to read anymore). However, I recognized the author, Simon Singh, who wrote an equally engrossing narrative on the history of encryption, from the scytales of the Greeks, through great European scandals (and be-headings) involving letters in cipher, and even to the amazing feats of the Poli More...

This book is about Andrew Wiles and how he proved Fermat’s Last Theorum by using all kinds of crossover higher maths. The book’s jacket says that you don’t have to be a mathematician to enjoy the book, and that’s true. While some math is discussed, and lots of it you’ll recognize from high school, it’s not essential that you get the math to enjoy the history of the problem and even the history of mathematics.

As far as understanding proving the Theorum? The author doesn’t really go into it. I kno More...

"My butter, garcon, is writ large in!"
a diner was heard to be chargin'.
"I HAD to write there,"
exclaimed waiter Pierre,
"I couldn't find room in the margarine."

Ever since I recently stumbled upon the documentary called 'The Proof' I've become extremely interested (almost obsessed) in Wiles's proof of Fermat's last Theorem and have been searching for a good book that would provide me with a real, mathematical explanation of it (mainly the connection between modular forms and elliptic curves), becau More...

A very well written book. I enjoyed the small stories and examples, scattered here and there throughout the text. You would imagine a book describing a 300-year old unsolvable riddle to be extremely hard, but the author did an excellent job to unfold the story, in a way such that the reader gets the main idea, without having to absorb too any mathematical jargon. At times I get nervous/excited when suddenly the book either hints the possibility of fermat's theorem being false, or when new progre More...

Reading this book I caught a glimpse of the rarefied atmosphere of mathematicians and their processes of discovery. I don't do mathematics and haven't studied anything beyond the bare minimum required for a Bachelor's degree, but I find something wonderful about the pursuits of people like Andrew Wiles and the number theorists who spend years of their lives working on a set of problems. Wiles's obsessive mindset and solitary quest reminded of Ron Carlson's short story "Towel Season" and I wonder More...

This is a fun read: a slice of mathematics history from Pythagoras to current day. Pierre de Fermat held 'amateur' status as a mathematician but is credited with advancing number theory among other things. As an amateur he rarely, if ever, submitted proofs of his work. Many of his contributions became known after his death when his son gathered his papers and published them. Among these works was a scribble made in the margin of a book in which he asserted that there is no integer solution for t More...

When Andrew Wiles announced his proof in 1993, Fermat's Last Theorem had gone unsolved for more than 350 years. There are very few problems in math that have stood up to that kind of scrutiny for so long- but what made Fermat so interesting was that the problem could be understood by anyone who got through High School algebra (from Wikipedia: "Fermat's Last Theorem states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two More...

Who would have thought a book about an extremely complicated maths problem could ever be an international best seller.
But here we have it. The story of a mathematical theory that had the greatest minds stumped for 358 years, and the quest to be the first to solve it.
It reads like a detective hunt spread over the centuries, with the 'culprit' teasing and getting ever nearer to capture - then slipping away again.
The enthusiasm and clarity of writer Simon Singh keeps the reader turning the pages.
I More...

A delightful read covering math history for many hundreds of years. Fermat lived in the late 17th century, and was a hobby mathematician (his government position discouraged socializing). He enjoyed teasing other mathematicians by solving something and asking them to try it before revealing it himself. Generally he didn't publish proofs. He just had scribble notes on the then-comprehensive mathematical volume. His "last theorem" was the last thing left in his notes that couldn't be proven, and c More...

For me, the rating for this book should be around two and a half stars, but I will give it three :D

The good parts: a coherent introduction regarding the origins of Fermat s theorem and the attempts of finding a proof, the anecdotes regarding various mathematicians (I was fairly impressed by Galois story), the metaphors used to explain the complicated mathematical techniques.

The not so good parts: the (good) intention to explain key concepts in a simplified way did not actually quench my thirst More...

Pasteurisiert mit 5 von 5 Sternen. Abenteuer Mathematik! Empfehlenswert!



Kann Mathematik abenteuerlich sein? Ja, sie kann! Simon Singh beweist, dass man die Geschichte eines mathematischen Satzes und seines Beweises zugleich spannend und mit einem Augenzwinkern erzählen kann.



Der Satz des Fermat sieht aus, wie eine Verallgemeinerung des pythagoreischen Satzes. Fermat hat vermutet, dass es keine ganzzahligen Werte gibt, für die dieser Satz gilt, und hat angeblich sogar einen wunderbaren Beweis dafü More...

(La recensione è ben più leggibile sul mio blog: http://bit.ly/cYuNNh)

Cosa c’è di così affascinante in questo teorema?

Il fatto che sia, per quanto ne so, l’unico ad avere un enunciato estremamente semplice e alla portata di tutti, ma la cui dimostrazione ha richiesto più di tre secoli e mezzo; indicativamente, dal 1637 al 1995.

È stata proprio l’abbordabilità dell’enunciato ad invogliare il matematico Andrew Wiles ad appassionarsene fin dall’età di 10 anni e a spingerlo ad affrontare un’impresa g More...

Any book that mentions the Bernoulli (Of the Bernoulli Principal fame) & the Chudnovsky Brothers (of the home-made supercomputer and Pi out to a billion digits or so fame) gives me a full-on uber-geek chubby!

Its light on the actual math, which is fine by me. I do love me some math, but when you get really into the esoteric stuff my eyes start to water and my head throbs (and not in a good way). As it covers the history of the enigma it introduces a lot of interesting characters – from a wom More...

Starts slowly, at the start of maths and philosophy before moving through the centuries. Some may feel the last chapters of the book are rushed as they cover more "new maths" faster than any other part of the book, however, the pacing fits perfectly to the building excitement regarding the acceleration towards an announcement of the solution to the theorem.

This book is meant for the latter half of the bell curve. If you're mathematical experience stopped at high school, this book will still disappoint you. I don't understand how you can write about math without writing some math. The equations given weren't pertinent to Fermat's Last Theorem, most were digressions that were meant to prove an already obvious point, an explanation of the Pythagorean theorem?, thank you but my elementary school teacher did plenty enough. The book skimps over the hard More...