书名：Fermat's Last Theorem费马大定理
作者：Simon Singh
出版社名称：Fourth Estate Ltd
出版时间：2002
语种：英文
ISBN：9781841157917
商品尺寸：12.9 x 2.3 x 19.8 cm
包装：平装
页数：368
本书Fermat's Last Theorem《费马大定理》分为两条主线，一条是历代数学家为征服费马大定理所付出的努力，另一条是费马大定理证明者怀尔斯的成长之路；其间穿插各位数学家的轶事，精彩纷呈。同时，《费马大定理》语言流畅、故事生动，是《数学的语言》的精彩延续，它将拯救你对数学学科的印象！

'I have a truly marvellous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.' It was with these words, written in the 1630s, that Pierre de Fermat intrigued and infuriated the mathematics community. For over 350 years, proving Fermat's Last Theorem was the most notorious unsolved mathematical problem, a puzzle whose basics most children could grasp but whose solution eluded the greatest minds in the world. In 1993, after years of secret toil, Englishman Andrew Wiles announced to an astounded audience that he had cracked Fermat's Last Theorem. He had no idea of the nightmare that lay ahead. In 'Fermat's Last Theorem' Simon Singh has crafted a remarkable tale of intellectual endeavour spanning three centuries, and a moving testament to the obsession, sacrifice and extraordinary determination of Andrew Wiles: one man against all the odds.

Review
‘If you enjoyed Dava Sobel’s “Longitude” you will enjoy this.’ --Evening Standard

‘This is probably the best popular account of a scientific topic I have ever read.’ --Irish Times

‘Reads like the chronicle of an obsessive love affair. It has the classic ingredients that Hollywood would recognise.’ --Daily Mail

‘To read it is to realise that there is a world of beauty and intellectual challenge that is denied to 99.9 per cent of us who are not high-level mathematicians.’ --The Times

‘This tale has all the elements of a most exciting story: an impenetrable riddle; the ambition and frustration of generations of hopefuls; and the genius who worked for years in secrecy to realise his childhood dream.’ --Express
《费马大定理》讲述的是一个“困惑了世间智者358年的谜题”的传奇。书中既有振奋人心的故事讲述方式，也有引人入胜的科学发现的历史。西蒙•辛格讲述了一个英国人经过数年秘密辛苦的工作，终于解决了具有挑战性的数学问题的艰辛旅程。
西蒙•辛格（Simon Singh），出生于英国萨默塞特郡，具有印度旁遮普血统，曾在伦敦帝国学院学习物理，并获剑桥大学粒子物理学博士学位。在BBC电视台《明日世界》工作5年后，参与了1996年获奖纪录片《地平线：费马大定理》的制作和导演。1999年出版《密码故事》一书。

Simon Singh is a science journalist and TV producer. Having completed his PhD at Cambridge he worked from 1991 to 1997 at the BBC producing Tomorrow's World and co-directing the BAFTA award-winning documentary Fermat's Last Theorem for the Horizon series. He is the author of Fermat's Last Theorem, which was a no 1 bestseller in Britain and translated into 22 languages. In 1999, he wrote The Code Book which was also an international bestseller and the basis for the Channel 4 series The Science of Secrecy.

1 ‘I Think I’ll Stop Here’
2 The Riddler
3 A Mathematical Disgrace
4 Into Abstraction
5 Proof by Contradiction
6 The Secret Calculation
7 A Slight Problem
8 Epilogue
It was the most important mathematics lecture of the century. Two hundred mathematicians were transfixed. Oni a quarter of them fully understood the dense mixture of Greek symbols and algebra that covered the blackboard. The rest were there merely to witness what they hoped would be a truly historic occasion.
The rumours had started the previous day. Electronic mail over the Internet had hinted that the lecture would culminate in a solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem, the world’s most famous mathematical problem. Such gossip was not uncommon. The subject of Fermat’s Last Theorem would often crop up over tea, and mathematicians would speculate as to who might be doing what. Sometimes mathematical mutterings in the senior common room would turn the speculation into rumours of a breakthrough, but nothing had ever materialised.
This time the rumour was different. One Cambridge research student was convinced that it was true that he dashed to the bookies to bet £10 that Fermat’s Last Theorem would be solved within the week. However, the bookie smelt a rat and refused to accept his wager. This was the fifth student to have approached him that day, all of them asking to place the identical bet. Format’s Last Theorem had battled the greatest minds on the planet for over three centuries, hut now even bookmakers were beginning to suspect that it was on the verge of being proved.
The three blackboards became filled with calculations and the lecturer paused. The first board was erased and the algebra continued. Each line of mathematics appeared to be one tiny step closer to the solution, but after thirty minutes the lecturer had still not announced the proof. The professors crammed into the front rows waited eagerly for the conclusion. The students standing at the back looked to their seniors for hints of what the conclusion might be. Were they watching a complete proof to Fermat’s Last Theorem, or was the lecturer merely outlining an incomplete and anticlimactic argument?
The lecturer was Andrew Wiles, a reserved Englishman who had emigrated to America in the 1980s and taken up a professorship at Princeton University where he had earned a reputation as one of the most talented mathematicians of his generation.