19th-century mathematicians thought the “roots of unity” were the key to solving Fermat’s Last Theorem. Then they discovered a fatal flaw. Sometimes the usual numbers aren’t enough to solve a problem.

If Stephen Sondheim can write a musical about Georges Seurat's pointillism, why shouldn't Joshua Rosenblum and Joanne Sydney Lessner write one about Pierre de Fermat's last theorem? Well, because they ...

Pierre de Fermat left behind a truly tantalizing hint of a proof when he died—one that mathematicians struggled to complete for centuries. François de Poilly, wikimedia commons The story is familiar ...

This is a preview. Log in through your library . Abstract Fermat 's principle of stationary travel time serves as a powerful tool for solving direct and inverse problems of wave propagation in media ...

Abstract Let D denote a disk of unit area. We call a set A ⊂ D perfect if it has measure 1/2 and, with respect to any reflection symmetry of D, the maximal symmetric subset of A has measure 1/4. We ...