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Fermat’s Enigma – Simon Singh

by Myrna Posted on November 19, 2019

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Fermat’s Enigma

The Epic Quest to Solve the World’s Greatest Mathematical Problem

Simon Singh

Genre: Mathematics

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: September 8, 1998

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Seller: Penguin Random House LLC


xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, …no solution "I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations.  What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple; proving it, however, became the Holy Grail of mathematics, baffling its finest minds for more than 350 years.  In  Fermat's Enigma –based on the author's award-winning documentary film, which aired on PBS's "Nova"–Simon Singh tells the astonishingly entertaining story of the pursuit of that grail, and the lives that were devoted to, sacrificed for, and saved by it.  Here is a mesmerizing tale of heartbreak and mastery that will forever change your feelings about mathematics.

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Fermat’s Enigma – Simon Singh

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October hurricanes aren’t supposed to be this scary.

by BNVGiusepp Posted on October 5, 2016

It all has to do with “molecular machines” — teeny devices made out of individual atoms — that mark the start of a wave of nano-innovation that could drastically change, well, a LOT. You want transparent solar panels? Tiny, super-efficient supercomputers? Cancer-killing robots that wander your bloodstream like assassin Ms. Frizzles? Nanotechnology could be the way.

The three winners — Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir James Frasier Stoddart, and Bernard L. Feringa — will split the $930,000 prize for their work, including building a “molecular motor,” a light-powered device powerful enough to rotate a glass tube 10,000 times its size.

“The molecular motor is at the same stage as the electric motor was in the 1830s, when scientists displayed various spinning cranks and wheels, unaware that they would lead to electric trains, washing machines, fans, and food processors,” the Nobel committee said in the press release announcing the prize.

Of course, nanomaterials come with some troubling potential side effects, from extra-sharp nanotubes that could act like asbestos in the lungs to teeny tiny pesticide nanodroplets that might never go away. But the Nobel committee, for one, is betting that these technologies, deployed correctly, have a whole lot of good to offer us.

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October hurricanes aren’t supposed to be this scary.

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