Statement that there are no natural numbers &math.x;, &math.y;, and &math.z; such that &math.x;&math.n; + &math.y;&math.n; = &math.z;&math.n;, in which &math.n; is a natural number greater than 2. About this, Pierre de Fermat wrote in 1637 in his copy of Diophantus's Arithmetica, “I have discovered a truly remarkable proof but this margin is too small to contain it.” Although the theorem was subsequently shown to be true for many specific values of &math.n;, leading to important mathematical advances in the process, the difficulty of the problem soon convinced mathematicians that Fermat never had a valid proof.
In 1995 the British mathematician Andrew Wiles (b. 1953) and his former student Richard Taylor (b. 1962) published a complete proof, finally solving one of the most famous of all mathematical problems.
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