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if Einstein or Shannon hadn't discovered their respective theories, someone else would have Maybe It probably wouldn't have taken very long, either. It actuall
by Lordarminius 9y ago
if Einstein or Shannon hadn't discovered their respective theories, someone else would have
Maybe
It probably wouldn't have taken very long, either.
It actually could take decades, centuries, millenia. Think of all the discoveries lost to antiquity that had to be rediscovered. Think of Eulers findings that would take decades for some othe mathematician to figure out afresh
- amelius 9y agoWell, Fermat's last theorem is one such example. How long did it take to rediscover a proof?
- joe_the_user 9y agoI believe the consensus among mathematicians is that Fermat either didn't have a proof or had an incorrect proof. Any statement of the modern proof would require hundreds of pages and results not available to Fermat. So it's likely Wiles didn't rediscover the proof but simply discovered it.