Hmm. Will it remain a mystery how Fermat proved FLT?

[Guest]

Source Link:

'Will it remain a mystery how Fermat originally managed to prove his Last Theorem (Fermat's Last Theorem or FLT)?',

https://www.quora.com/Will-it-remain-a-mystery-how-Fermat-originally-managed-to-prove-his-Last-Theorem.

[Guest]

The mystery of Fermat's proof of his last theorem (FLT) is unraveled via the following two important links:

1. 'A Simpler Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem',

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300080369_A_Simpler_Proof_of_Fermat's_Last_Theorem;

2. 'Prove a statement about a conditional Diophantine equation',

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1993460/prove-a-statement-about-a-conditional-diophantine-equation.

[Guest]

Hmm. I, David Cole, can personally relate to the following important story:

For a Black Mathematician, What It’s Like to Be the ‘Only One’,

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/edray-goins-black-mathematicians.html.

Racism/prejudice is very difficult to overcome...

[Guest]

Do you have any reason to think Fermat had a proof? Yes, he wrote in the margin of a book (not discovered until after his death) that he had simple proof. But the fact that he continued to give proofs of special cases makes it clear that what happened was what has happened to all of us- he thought he had a simple, elegant proof but, after a good night's sleep, realized that he was wrong!

[Guest]

Do you have any reason to think Fermat had a proof? Yes, he wrote in the margin of a book (not discovered until after his death) that he had simple proof. But the fact that he continued to give proofs of special cases makes it clear that what happened was what has happened to all of us- he thought he had a simple, elegant proof but, after a good night's sleep, realized that he was wrong!

Hah! That's your miseducated guess! ... The great Fermat was right! And you are very wrong!