Tuesday 24 August 2010

Question for Aug 24 - PS

The below note can be found in page 61 of a book B published in 1670, originally written by X (who died in about 280 BC), with additions by Y (who died in 1665).
Cubum autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos ejusdem nominis fas est dividere: cujus rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet.
A famous event related to the above note happened in 1995.

Identify X, Y, B. Why is this particular note in this page of this book famous?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Pythagoras, Fermat, Dont now the name of the book.

Dev said...

Y is Pierre de Fermat. X might be Euclid, which means B is Elements. The note was written by Fermat, claiming that he had a proof for his last theorem, but the margin was too small to fit it in. Fermat's Last Theorem was finally proved by Andrew Wiles in 1995.

Anonymous said...

Fermat, his theorem and Euclid's "Elements"?

The Answer said...

X = Diophantus, the father of algebra, and Y = Fermat.
The book B = Arithmetica, the earliest known text on algebra.

This is the note in which Fermat introduced his famous last theorem (which was finally proved 4 centuries later by Andrew Wiles in 1995). The note when translated to English reads as follows:
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof that it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second into two like powers. This margin is too narrow to contain it.

Several people argue that Fermat may not really have had a proof, since the eventual proof used mathematical techniques that were developed long after Fermat's times.

Congrats Dev and the anons for getting Fermat right!