A Tale of Two Theorems

 

A Tale of Two Theorems

Samskrith Raghav 

I wrote this poem after reading the book FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM by Simon Singh; It's a fine book, and it reads like a suspense thriller. I highly recommend you read the book!

We begin our tale with Fermat, a Frenchman

You can say he was half a mathematician

One day he was working and then he was thinking

Of a statement which would send the world sinking:

“The square of a plus the square of b

Always will equal the whole square of c

But by try to cube it or do anything larger

You’ll leave without ever getting any smarter.”

He said he had proof, just like all the others:

All of this claim’s big sisters and brothers

But he had an excuse when people came chargin’

“Such a marvelous proof wouldn’t fit in the margin.”

So the math-hunt began, to find this new proof

To affirm of a conviction or find a disproof

But no one found proof for a word that he said

So Fermat would find himself undefeated

For centuries men worked, and women too

All the people that toiled numbered more than just two

But it proved much too great for the best of the best

And many a person had to put it to rest

But out the blue came two bright young minds

From Japan they were just two of a kind

They knew that one maths was linked to another

But they had no proof to satisfy others

Now maths had new tools to attack this old problem

But no one could think how exactly to use them

And slowly the people stopped paying attention

While only one man kept up his obsession

When Andrew Wiles was just a young lad

He read of Fermat’s long lost theorem

His attention was captured; he was so enraptured

He knew he would solve this great problem

For many long years, he toiled and stumbled

Not knowing how to approach such a problem

But he kept up his without any grumble

He resumed secret work on the conundrum

He tried and he tried with one kind of theory

But his efforts yielded no answers

Then he remembered the two students’ story

And refused to quit ‘til he mastered

He again began toiling to find a pathway

On how to prove this new conjecture

He worked and he worked and he knew it so well

He could even deliver a lecture

In Spring, there was a math conference

At Cambridge, where Wiles was heading

He arranged for some lectures with very vague names

Unknown to him, dangers were lurking

He announced the proof to applause and fanfare

During summer the smarts reviewed it

They found a small, fundamental flaw

Which set back Wiles to the end of his wit

Wiles began toiling and working again

But this time he made no progress

The world waited for his great big proof,

But Wiles was now in distress

Wiles worked for one year and almost gave up

But a friend decided to help him

One day he was thinking and then he realized

The great flaw that made him so grim

He reversed his course and went back to a theory

He had tried and failed to employ

He employed his new work on new forms of math

And soon the problem he destroyed

And so ends the tale of Fermat, a Frenchman

Whose puzzle was solved at Princeton

Three fifty years of stress and work later

We can say, “that puzzle’s been done.”