For the mathematically minded (Fermat's Last Theorem - Simon Singh)

Member Name: Clayeree

Product:	Fermat's Last Theorem - Simon Singh
Date:	15/09/09 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very well written and easy to understand

Disadvantages: None

I always enjoyed maths lessons at school (sad as that may sound) and since then have made a point of reading my way through some of the maths books to be found in the 'Popular Science' section of my local bookshop. I was initially put off this book as I was expecting it to be a boring and hard to follow description of a proof of some obscure mathematical theorem. However there being few alternatives (my local bookshop is not very large), I thought I'd give this a go.

When I was at school, Fermat's Last Theorem didn't feature on the GCSE or A Level maths syllabus so I had no clue what it was about. On picking up this book I was pleased to find that the theorem is actually quite easy to understand and not only that but the author explains it so well that I grasped what the book was about immediately.

Whilst Fermat's Last Theorem itself may seem simple if you have a reasonable level of mathematical knowledge (A Level standard maybe), the proof of it is actually very complex. So complex, in fact, that it took 358 years for the theorem to finally be proved by a British mathematician named Andrew Wiles. A professor at Princeton who has since been knighted, Wiles first came across Fermat's Last Theorem as a young boy and decided there and then that he would be the first person to prove it.

This book tells the story of how Wiles did just that. It describes over two thousand years of mathematical investigation which lead up to the formulation of Fermat's Last Theorem, and then goes on to talk about the many years it took for the theorem to be proved. Thankfully, given that the actual proof of the Theorem is incredibly complicated, the author simply explains how mathematicians pieced together the techniques and information they had in order to construct the proof, rather than discussing the proof itself step by step.

The author very cleverly manages to explain various mathematical proofs in a way that a non-mathematician can understand without over-simplifying them. The book is fascinating and I found that the amount of work mathematicians have to put into, what at first glance would seem, a simple proof, was amazing. Although people who are not interested in mathematics may be put off by this book, it is definitely worth reading as a chronicle of how one man was able to succeed in proving something where countless others had failed.

Summary: Even If you have only the slightest interest in mathematics, you should read this book