What starts as a simple counting problem with colored beads reveals one of number theory's most elegant results. This is Fermat's Little Theorem, discovered not through abstract algebra, but through ...

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 ...

A deterministic proof seems within reach, until composite numbers start masquerading as primes. This video traces how Fermat's theorem becomes a probabilistic algorithm, and why embracing uncertainty ...

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 ...

On June 23, 1993, the mathematician Andrew Wiles gave the last of three lectures detailing his solution to Fermat’s last theorem, a problem that had remained unsolved for three and a half centuries.

Here's a scene from "The Royale," an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that aired March 27, 1989. In it, Captain Jean-Luc Picard tells his First Officer, Commander Riker, about his work in ...

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 ...