Fermat’s Last Theorem

"Fermat was a 17th-century French mathematician and, like all mathematicians, he came up with mathematical problems. His last, the famous one, was all about triangles. Pythagoras had worked out that if you have a triangle with sides x, y and z, the formula to work out the length of the hypotenuse is z2= x2+ y2. Many millennia later, Fermat realised that this is only true for the power of 2 – ie his theorem says that there are no solvable equations for xn + yn = zn , where n is any number greater than 2. Exactly. Many mathematicians tried to prove it, and Fermat had cheekily written a teasing note, saying that he could demonstrate the theorem, but he’s not going to because there was not enough space in the margin! The book makes maths really, really fascinating: it’s about the history of maths, and also about the Cambridge mathematician Andrew Wiles who was obsessed with Fermat’s theorem since the age of ten and spent his whole life wanting to solve it, and finally did in the 1990s. The book is great because Simon Singh has this ability to write about the driest and most complex scientific or mathematical concepts and issues, and somehow make them come alive. You feel like you’re there, and you want to solve this theory, and you’re so desperate to know the solution (which comes on the last page of the book), and you also feel a lot of empathy with Andrew Wiles and you want to join him and his story. Simon Singh is a great proponent of freedom of speech for scientific journalism, which I think is absolutely necessary if science is going to progress. There has to be a proper dialogue between the public and scientists, who have to be able to write freely about scientific findings and issues where there’s scientific evidence. It doesn’t have a lot to do with neuroscience, but I love this book."