Search engine Giant Google, who owns the “Doodle patent,” celebrates the birthday of Pierre de Fermat today. The Pierre de Fermat Google Doodle is depicted by a green chalkboard with equations and mathematical symbols written on top of the erased Google logo.
Google also embedded a hidden message in Fermat’s Doodle: “I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this theorem, which this doodle is too small to contain.” Clicking the chalkboard image with initiate the search term “Pierre de Fermat.”
According to Wikipedia, Fermat is a French lawyer, but also an amateur mathematician who is now known for his contributions that led to “infinitesimal calculus,” or the branch of mathematics that tackles slopes of curves, area under curves, minima and maxima and also the terms tangent and normals for the slopes of curves, and area under curves, positive or negative depending on the slope of the curve.
Fermat is also recognized for his discovery of the smallest ordinates of curved lines, which is comparable to another branch of mathematics, the differential calculus. Apparently, Calculus is divided into two parts, the integral and the differential.
The proof, commemorated in today's Google doodle, was written around 1630. It states that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two. Or as Fermat put it, "It is impossible for a cube to be the sum of two cubes, a fourth power to be the sum of two fourth powers, or in general for any number that is a power greater than the second to be the sum of two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition that this margin is too narrow to contain."
Fermat never actually published the proof, which remained unsolved for three centuries despite assorted prizes offered for a solution and countless published false proofs. In that time, Fermat's theorem became the most famous mathematical theorem -- -- referenced in the Simpsons and Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Andrew Wiles finally solved the proof in 1993 and tidied up the loose ends shortly after, winning himself a tidy sum in prize money to boot.
Fermat published only one work, preferring to do all his mathletics in letters to other numbercrunchers. He never again referred to his infamous marvellous proof, leading some to wonder if he had actually solved the problem. We might take that approach.
No comments:
Post a Comment