Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> 1. Fermat claimed to have a proof, but to this day nobody knows what it was.

  Some people have the opinion that, regardless of being an exceptionally
gifted mathematician, Fermat was simply wrong when he wrote that margin
note.

  There's some evidence of this. IIRC, Fermat provided proofs for the cases
n=3 and n=4 some time *after* he wrote that margin note. Why would he do
that if he had a simple proof for *all* values of n?

  The most logical explanation is that Fermat was wrong, realized it
himself some time after, and then proceded studying his own theorem
further by, among other things, giving proofs for n=3 and n=4. He simply
didn't go back and erase the margin note (maybe he just forgot about it).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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