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Vijay Fafat
- Published on
A funny little story about the slightly malicious reason why Fermat wrote his famous note about his Last Conjecture in the margin of a book. Should be taken as just a chuckle-worthy piece rather than any reflection on Fermat, though some Fermat-philes might take offense to it. The story is available as a recitation by the author at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWz0mJY9_Go
On this story, I was reminded of Gauss’s petulant comment re Fermat’s theorem in 1816 (to Heinrich Olbers): ‘I confess that Fermat’s Last Theorem, as an isolated proposition, has very little interest for me, because I could easily lay down a multitude of such propositions, which one could neither prove nor dispose of.’. So mathematicians at that exalted level (in which Fermat certainly belonged) would not have found it too difficult to conjecture.