Like many math students, I had dreams of mathematical greatness. I thought I was close once. A difficult algebra problem in college kept me working late into the night. After hours of struggle, I felt ...

What starts as a simple counting problem with colored beads reveals one of number theory's most elegant results. This is ...

The proof Wiles finally came up with (helped by Richard Taylor) was something Fermat would never have dreamed up. It tackled the theorem indirectly, by means of an enormous bridge that mathematicians ...

Fermat’s Last Theorem is so simple to state, but so hard to prove. Though the 350-year-old claim is a straightforward one about integers, the proof that University of Oxford mathematician Andrew Wiles ...

WHO: James M. Vaughn Jr., heir to a fortune generated by the oil gushers of East Texas; English mathematician Sir Andrew Wiles; and seventeenth-century French amateur mathematician Pierre de Fermat.

Mathematicians have shown Fermat's Last Theorem can be proved using only a small portion of Grothendieck's work. Specifically, the theorem can be justified using "finite order arithmetic." Fermat's ...

This is part one of a two-part series. Part II: “A Mathematical Tragedy” is available at About Time. Sophie Germain was the first person to develop a realistic plan to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem.

Google’s Doodles have been brainier lately, and Wednesday’s Doodle is no exception. The doodle features a mathematical equation scribbled onto a chalkboard over the “erased” Google logo. What is this ...

Mathematicians have figured out how to expand the reach of a mysterious bridge connecting two distant continents in the mathematical world. The proof Wiles finally came up with (helped by Richard ...