At some point everyone who studies number theory is going to come across the following body text in a maths book...
it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain
i knew that it was coming
At some point everyone who studies number theory is going to come across the following body text in a maths book...
it is impossible to separate a cube into two cubes, or a fourth power into two fourth powers, or in general, any power higher than the second, into two like powers. I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain
Fermat's last theorem. It has spawned generations of research in number theory.
The question is, what to write in the margin?