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Andrew Wiles on proving Fermat’s Last Theorem (1995) [video]
Full documentary: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074rxx https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074rxx
- BinRoo 2mo agoAside: the AI summary of this attributes the wrong person. This is Andrew Wiles.
- pseudohadamard 2mo agoJust to check, this video isn't NSFW is it?
- jackdoe 2mo agodepends, I would say it is not safe for work as it makes you question what are you doing there :) its phenomenology porn
- ThrowawayTestr 2mo agoYouTube generally doesn't allow that
- molybd3num 2mo agooh it does
- convolutedsoup 2mo agoThis comment left me so bewildered that I wanted to create a hackernews account just to comment this.
- esafak 2mo agoIt might be a joke in reference to the video's title, "I loved every minute of it, however hard it had been".
- convolutedsoup 2mo agoohh lmaoo
- alex1138 2mo agoI've only skimmed it but Simon Singh's book on it seems reasonably accessible to non-experts One interesting thing of FLT is Wiles is on record as saying it opened the door (I think. This is from memory) to Langlands Program, a series of mathematical connections Harder problems of course exist, Riemann Hypothesis et al but FLT still took hundreds of years to solve
- hingler36 2mo agoI read Singh's book a few years ago, I really enjoyed it and left with a basic understanding of the underlying math
- QuesnayJr 2mo agoYou remember correctly. His result is a special case of Langlands.
- hazbot 2mo agoI read Simon Singh's book as a young teenager - loved it!
- seanhunter 2mo agoLanglands is a massive programme but originated with Langlands conjecturing in 1967 about some deep connections between two seemingly unconnected areas of mathematics (number theory and harmonic analysis). In particular, he started with what was then called Taniyama-Shimura-Weil conjecture which concerns the number of integer solutions to particular types of equations of elliptic curves following (for no immediately obvious reason) a harmonic series. Wiles’ proof of FLT proved a special case of TSW and involved techniques which some of his students then used to prove the TSW conjecture in full generality, so is now called the “modularity theorem”. In fact the Langlands programme began with Langlands writing his ideas in a letter which he wrote to Andre Weil because of his association with the TSW conjecture. I enjoyed this explanation https://youtu.be/4dyytPboqvE?is=VFFjLHSk7vgosN54 https://youtu.be/4dyytPboqvE?is=VFFjLHSk7vgosN54 by Ed Frenkel.
- elromulous 2mo ago(disclaimer: I haven't watched this yet) Mathematicians / folks knowledgeable on the subject - do you think Fermat had an error in his (lost) proof? Or that there exists a solution that perhaps is more straightforward than Wiles's? My understanding is that Wiles had to use a ton of math (and invent some new math?) that had not yet been invented in Fermat's time.
- jerkstate 2mo agoI don't know that much about math but I've read that one possibility is he had found a valid proof for n=4 and assumed that it generalized. Hopefully someone else who knows more about the subject chimes in!
- kadoban 2mo agoConsensus is that there's no way he had a correct, general proof. My personal guess is he figured out later that his proof was broken or limited and never got around to fixing it.
- odyssey7 2mo agoWe haven’t yet reached the era in which we’re allowed to know about the technique. The simple, intuitive proof will become available to us when the time is right.
- hn_throwaway_99 2mo agoQuite literally, WTF is that supposed to mean?
- kjs3 2mo agoIt's the internet. Don't feed the trolls. Or the loons.
- lmntryflt 2mo ago[dead]
- jen729w 2mo agoUnfortunately this clip cuts just before the most emotional part. At 01:29 as he's about to break down, he says – this is my memory, sorry, paraphrasing: "Nothing I ever do again…" – and then, having barely held it together for the last 30 seconds, he has to stop. It brings me to tears every time I watch it. A man realising the sheer magnitude of the thing he did. It's the most relevant part for humanity today. Ah! Found it. This is a better clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaKyvr4ar1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaKyvr4ar1Q
- Daneel_ 2mo agoThank you for linking it. What a powerful moment.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- jackdoe 2mo agoMost people never get to do their great work. Bob Dylan reflecting on his early work https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Fh3pAJf-vdU https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Fh3pAJf-vdU I wish to live my life so I can say one day 'Nothing I ever do again will.."
- offtopicguide 2mo ago[flagged]
- ggm 2mo agoI live in Australia. One day I received a very excited phonecall at a ludicrously early time from a Canadian Mathematician I knew (John McKay, Concordia. He's dead now but had been a figure in my childhood from his time in Edinburgh in the 60s. he had worked with John Conway early in both their careers) telling me this was rumoured to be coming, and asking me to get the word out and find out what I could. I pointed out I wasn't a mathematician or very well connected, he said "doesn't matter: Get to your national broadcaster and ask them to verify the story" So I rang the ABC and asked to speak to the Science Desk. This was at around 7am by this time. I was connected immediately to Robyn Williams, the premier science communicator at the ABC, despite having no name, no evident back story or trust. He was absolutely delightful to talk to, agreed with a laugh that he often got excited calls about people squaring the circle or finding repeat patterns in PI digits and was used to crank callers, listened to me, probably did some checks and then said he'd contact somebody at Cambridge and see what the gen was. My memory is he called me back a little while later saying they'd confirmed a room was booked for a significant public announcement seminar, and thanked me for the tip. This was a long time ago, it's equally likely I misremembered and he gave me a name to check with in the UK and I did the leg work. The point is, I wasn't just told to bugger off. Nowadays it would be all over twitter. John was a bit old school and liked phone calls. They had internet emails in 92 of course I think he just liked the physicality of a call.
- ChaitanyaSai 2mo agoLovely story, thank you :)
- arcfour 2mo agoI love these little anecdotes on HN, they are like a little dessert post-main-post. Thanks for sharing :-) what an incredible thing to have had the scoop on!
- panzi 2mo agoAndrew Wiley gently smiles, does his thing an voila! Q.E.D. we agree and we all shout hurra as he confirms what Fermat jotted down on that margin which could have used some enlarging
- matltc 2mo agoNow it's back to reality Feeling the finality Of his greatest achievement He couldn't believe it But it's true, now he's feelin' blue So between me and you: Think twice before you do