Customer Reviews
Promising...but disappointing in the end - By: Massimo Lavagnini, 28 Oct 2008 
The book looks like the author is just postponing the end of the story just repeating & repeating the same ideas. The part of the proof & the attempts to correct the proof are quite disappointing because they are too much redundant. Moreover Singh is sliding some e-mails which don't add anything to the story & are quite "impenetrable". I do not like this way of writing. The author pretends not to use math symbology & math concepts beyond very basic ones, & then he lets go concepts like Hecke algebra, Euler system, "quasi-automorphic representations", i.e. without giving any clue about what they mean.
I think it leaves too much maths unexplained (and in a book about a math conundrum you understand it is a big problem!); I would have loved to see the same ingenuity Derbyshire put in his wonderful "Prime Obsession".
Mathematics as you've never seen it before - By: J. Duducu, 21 May 2008 
I was never a fan of maths at school. It did not come easily to me & I failed to see the relevance of trigonometry to my everyday life.
I say this so you realise I am not some sort of science geek who was best friends with a calculator. That's because I found this book absolutely fascinating. It made me laugh 3 times in the first 20 pages alone!
What Simon Singh does is through Fermat's puzzle describe the history of mathematics from Pythagoras right up to the 1990's. To the layman names like Euclid put in the mind very dull old guys, but they are brought to life with fascinating anecdotes. For example there's the tortured young French mathematician Galois who is dead by 20, his final mathematical theories franticallly scribbled down before a dual. Then there's the story that Pythagoras himself drowned a man when he discovered a certain type of number he objected to!
All of this is carefully woven into the story of Andrew Wiles' life long obsession to prove Fermat's last theorem a puzzle that had foxed the whole world for over 350 years!
Everything is explained in a way that it can be digested by someone who has only a passing interest in maths & as a whole is a remarkable book.
Interesting, exciting, challenging; great read - By: Shad Deen, 20 May 2008 
What I loved the most about this book was it's timeline-structure. Dating back to the Pythagorean ages to the present; I thought this was a brilliant idea. The book is full of interesting stories of what the most famous mathematicians in the world had experienced during their profession.
The book reaches out to people on many levels:
Women:
The story told about Sophie Germain (born in 1776), the daughter of a merchant whom outside of her work shared a great passion for Mathematics. However during this age, female mathematicians were frowned upon, & so to study at the Ecole, she took the identity of a former student at the Academy named August Le Blanc. The academy was unaware that he had left Paris & continued to print lecture notes & problems for him. Germain had been submitting the answers to these problems under his name. As her work progressed she had made a remarkable breakthrough in revealing the proof to Fermat's Last Theorem; & with the help of Gauss, one of the most famous mathematicians. They would keep in regular contact regarding mathematical problems until the day where she had submitted this breakthrough to him, she had also revealed that she in fact, is a woman; & received an astonishing response from Gauss's overwhelming reaction (In the best way possible) - Germain had become an icon for female mathematicians.
Mathematicians/People who love maths:
Appendixes located in the back of the book where readers with a higher level of mathematical knowledge can read further into the problem with more examples.
Musicians:
mathematical properties of plucking a string to achieve different tones.
Etc.
I remember particularly being shocked about Pythagoras's shame. Where one of his students had discovered the concept of irrational numbers, & as Pythagoras failed to understand this concept, he had sent for the student to be drowned, & claimed irrational numbers as the devil's work; absolutely shameful of such a famous & respected mathematician. Again, this could possibly reach the interest of historians.
There are so many aspects of the book to talk about but I need to keep this short & sweet. Overalll the book was a huge success & covered enough of mathematical history to engage the reader in the problem & alllow them to enjoy it at the same time. However I did notice that a lot of other significant people in mathematics were not mentioned, like Muhammad bin Mūsā al-Khwārizmī - who discovered Algebra mathematics. I also feel that towards the end of the book where the story of Andrew Wiles's steps to solving the theorem was slightly lengthy, & to be completely honest, started to bore me (Hence my 4 star rating).
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in mathematics, history, or simply like mysteries & puzzles.
Better than the Da Vinci Code! - By: T. Bartlett, 20 Mar 2008 This is a very well-written book: high-level mathematics made accessible to alll. It is a true adventure story - & if you are also interested in finding out what exactly it is about mathematics that motivates mathematicians - then this is the book to read. Highly recommended.
Fermat's Last Theorem - By: Roger Boyle, 10 Jan 2008 an interesting book about Mathematics & about mathematicians both the famous & not so famous
