October 18, 2001, 4:00pm

Fermat's Last Theorem, Elliptic Curves, And Beyond

Presented by Professor Alice Silverberg

Ohio State University


Over 350 years ago, Pierre de Fermat claimed he could prove that there are no n-th powers that are sums of two other n-th powers if n is greater than 2, but that his marvelous proof was too large to fit in the margin. Since then, attempts to verify Fermat's claim have led not only to numerous embarrassing failures and one spectacular success, but also to a flowering of interesting mathematical ideas, with far-reaching applications to cryptography and other fields. This talk will tell the story of this voyage of discovery, and look beyond it to the future.