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 ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1994, an earthquake of a proof shook up the mathematical world. The mathematician Andrew Wiles had finally settled Fermat’s Last ...

The Pythagorean Theorem—discovered by the Greek mathematician Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE—is a cornerstone of mathematics. Simply stated as a 2 + b 2 = c 2, the theorem posits that the sum of ...

Hundreds of years before a Greek scholar outlined his proof of the Pythagorean theorem, ancient Chinese scholars proved it using just 17 characters, a renowned Chinese mathematician highlighted in a ...