The article is a very interesting popular account of the Fermat-Wiles Theorem and the discovery of the flaw in Wiles's first attempted proof of the theorem. I w

The article is a very interesting popular account of the Fermat-Wiles Theorem and the discovery of the flaw in Wiles's first attempted proof of the theorem. I was glad to see that the article makes the timeline of Fermat's writings on the topic sufficiently clear to support the historical statement that Fermat himself surely didn't have a proof for the full theorem: "Fermat himself had given a proof for n = 4." (Writing marginal notes in the book about number theory he was reading was something that Fermat did early in his amateur study of mathematics, while doing his professional work as a lawyer. Fermat later "published" many proofs in the manner of his era by writing letters to other scholars. Fermat's son published the marginal notations in an edition of the book Arithmetica published only after Fermat's death. If Fermat actually had a proof for the theorem known as his last theorem, he had plenty of opportunity in his lifetime to find other pieces of paper on which to write it down.) I recall that the current textbook Mathematics and Its History by John Stillwell[1] reviews the history of this topic pretty well. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Its-History-Undergraduate-Texts/dp/144196052X/ http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Its-History-Undergraduate-...