There is no way Fermat could have fit that in the margin. Definitely vindicated.

zamadatix an hour ago | parent | next [-]

While pretty much everyone is certain Fermat was mistaken in believing he had a valid proof for the theorem, this is an expanded (compared to proof presentations) version of one proof - not the shortest presentation of the shortest valid proof.

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vlovich123 37 minutes ago | parent [-]

Given the likely length of the shortest possible proof, I feel like Fermat is 100% vindicated - the proof won’t fit in the margin.

My strong hunch is that it was a joke - he knew how difficult the problem was and claiming he had a solution was I think a huge motivating factor for many mathematicians trying to prove it. The greatest nerd snipe troll in history.

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BeetleB 33 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Most likely an error. Some time after he wrote that margin note, he wrote a document proving a special case of the FLT (i.e. it's true for n satisfying some property). Why would he do that if he had already proved it?

	▲	zamadatix 26 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That actually agrees with GP's take (joking/lying about having had a proof too big to fit in the margin): He would do that because if he thought the problem was extremely difficult but didn't actually have a proof when writing the note he would still want to go on and try to pick away at the problem.

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zamadatix 24 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Maybe, we'd have to go back and ask him to be sure. I mostly just didn't want to leave an as of yet certainly unproven vindication about this hanging in a thread about finally having a formalized proof of the very topic :D

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bananaflag 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I am really interested in whether AI will find a significantly easier (1920 level or so) proof of FLT.