British mathematician Sir Andrew Wiles has been announced as this year’s recipient of the Abel prize, widely regarded as the Nobel for mathematics, awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. In 1994, professor Wiles solved the Last Theorem first formulated by the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat in 1637, stating: "There are no whole number solutions to the equation xn+yn=zn when n is greater than 2," which had baffled mathematicians for 300 years. He will get 6m Norwegian Krone (£500,000 or $700,000) as a part of award. https://www.theguardian.com/science...w-wiles-abel-prize-fermats-last-theorem-proof
Few decades ago I attended a seminar on maths, one of the guest mathematician speaker, touching upon this theorem warned us not to think about solving this as at that time it was apparent to him that tools and knowledge of maths was not sufficient to solve this. The real genius of fermat lies in the fact that he could hint at the solution centuries ago along with the theorem. There could be an alternative proof to this, and may be one day we will crack that too.
Actually, the history shows that there are many dead ends. As with the twin primes conjecture or reaching the South Pole, the statement of the problem is easy but the route to a solution is laborious and treacherous.
True... But what is worth noting is that at that time the complex maths as used by Wiles was not available and not known to Fermat....Does it not suggest that we are more inclined towards complexities rather than simple approach ? Possibly we erroneously feel that all the simple things have already been explored or we are too smart to miss anything simple or we feel that not much value will be attached to simple solutions.
