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The proof of Fermat's last theorem by Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor was presented to an audience of over 300 people during a ten--day conference at Boston University in August, 1995. At that conference, I issued a poetry challenge asking for occasional verse to celebrate the proof. While the authors' anonymity was preserved at the meeting, all things are revealed in time.
If you would like to contribute to this poetry competition, please send your masterpiece to Jeremy Teitelbaum . The editor's decisions regarding suitability for publication in this forum are arbitrary, personal, and final.
With thanks to all of the participants, here are the entries (in no particular order).
Author: John Fitzgerald
Fermat's last theorem
Is a puzzling queer one:
Squares of a plane
Wholely squared, aren't arcane;
Cubic volumes and more, though
Have no solutions, I'm sure; so
All postulates otherwise
Will prove other than wise.
Author: Maurice Machover
Fermat's theorem has been solved,
What will now make math evolve?
There are many problems still,
None of which can cause that thrill.
Years and years of history,
Gave romance to Fermat-spree,
Amateurs and top men too,
Tried to push this theorem through.
Some have thought they reached the goal,
But were shipwrecked on the shoal,
So the quest grew stronger still;
Who would pay poor Fermat's bill?
So what is now the pearl to probe,
The snark to hunt, the pot of gold,
The fish to catch, the rainbow's end,
The distant call towards which to tend?
One such goal's the number brick,
where integers to all lengths stick:
To sides, diagonals, everyone,
Does is exist or are there none?
Then there are those famous pearls,
that have stymied kings and earls:
Goldbach,Twin Primes, Riemann Zeta;
No solutions, plenty data.
Find a perfect number odd;
Through 3n+1 go plod;
Will the P=NP?
Send a code unbreakably.
Are independence proofs amiss;
Continuum Hypothesis;
Find a proof which has some texture
of the Poincare conjecture.
And so, you see, onward we sail,
there still are mountains we must scale;
But now there's something gone from math,
At Fermat's end we weep and laugh.
Author: Jonathan Harvey
A mathematician named Wiles
Had papers stacked in large piles
Since he saw a clue
He could show Fermat true
Mixing many mathematical styles
He labored in search of the light
To find the crucial insight
Young Andrew, it seems
Had childhood dreams
To prove Mr. Fermat was right
He studied for seven long years
Expending much blood, sweat, and tears
After showing the proof
A sceptic said "Poof!
There's a hole here", raising deep fears.
This shattered Mr. Wiles's belief
His ship was wrecked on a reef
Then a quick switcheroo
Came out of the blue
Providing his mind much relief.
Mr. Wiles had been under the gun
But the obstacle blocking Proof One
Fixed a
much older way
From an earlier day
And now Wiles has his place in the sun
Author: Ted Munger
With an integer greater than 2
It's something one simply can't do
If this margin were fat
I'd show you all that
but it's not so the proof is on you!
Author: Robert Vivian Huxley (with acknowledgement to Kenneth Grahame)
The clever men at Oxford
Computed for hours and hours
But they none of them found a cube or higher
As the sum of two equal powers.
A Wiley don from Cambridge
Cogitated for seven years -
Eventually told his friends
"By Hecke I'm moved to tears!"
"The Taniyama Conjecture's true
My new solution's stronger
This proof perfects old Fermat's note
If marginally longer"
Author: Jonathan Matte
Sir Wiles wrote home to his mama
And said, "I've improved Taniyama."
His mother replied,
"I am filled with such pride . . .
And to think, I once changed your pajamas."
Author: Jonathan Matte
Said Wiles, "I know it's for real
I've proven this theorem with zeal."
His doubters then said
"You're out of your head . . .
You've just reinvented the Weil."
Author: Jonathan Matte
A mathematician named Pierre
Thought "I wonder if someone will care
If I say there's a proof
And then (somewhat aloof)
Admit I can't fit it in there."
Author: Peggy Rust
What is a 'theorem'?
and what was Fermat's?
Personally,
I prefer cats.
Author: Peter Shalen
No higher pow'r can ever be,
The sum of two of like degree.
That shouldn't be too hard to see...
Author: Joseph Shaya
The proof of the claim of Fermat,
is truly a marvellous tract.
Did Pierre tease us all
'cause the margin was small,
or his writing was much much too fat?
Author: Matt Perriens
A mathematician named Wiles
Came up with a proof for the files
He stretched Fermat's margin
And managed to barge in
Where others lay felled on their trials.
Author: Barry Mazur
When Fermat Vapours clog our loaded Brows,
With furrow'd frowns, when stupid downcast Eyes
Th'external Symptoms of some Gap within
Our Proof express, or when in sullen Dumps
With Head Incumbent on Expanded Palm,
Moping we sit, our Gaulloise snuffed, deform'd,
Sing then, Oh Wiles, and Taylor, Wiles!
Oh trio: put Fermata to our Toils.
Author: Jeremy Teitelbaum
We take an elliptic curve E,
consider the points killed by 3,
This "rho" must be modular,
and by facts which are popular,
the proof of Fermat comes for free.
Author: Everett Howe, Hendrik Lenstra, and David Moulton.
"My butter, garcon, is writ large in!"
a diner was heard to be chargin'.
"I HAD to write there,"
exclaimed waiter Pierre,
"I couldn't find room in the margarine."
Author: Anonymous
Rational, modular
cohomologically
Wiles and Taylor
prove they
both are the same.
Modular, rational
nonarchimedian
methods now
justify
Fermat's old claim.
Author: Matt Baker
Once upon a midnight dreary,
As I pondered weak and weary,
O'er many a quaint and etale sort of cohomology,
While inducing representations,
I was led to deformations,
And the ramifications of modular forms in characteristic p.
So I struggled to break free.
Ah, discreetly I conjectured,
to myself alone I lectured,
As the virile bust of Fermat wrought its ghost upon my floor,
Suddenly there came an insight,
that these flat group schemes were finite
And I represented functors never dreamed about before.
Then my soul began to soar.
"Taniyama!" I then shouted,
As the logic from me spouted,
"It all comes down to looking at the prime l equals 3!"
Modularity is the conclusion,
And the Frey curve an illusion,
So Fermat's equation cannot have nontrivial roots in Z!
Quoth the raven, "Q.E.D".
Author: Alf van der Poorten
With a little ingenious phrasing,
The proof's detail is not quite as dazing,
It's enough just to dream,
Of a finite flat scheme,
and to say that the proof is amazing.
Author: Alf van der Poorten
I'm beginning to see the attraction,
in deformation 'n complete intersection,
I no longer fear 'em,
'cause Fermat's Last Theorem,
Demands that they have our affection.
Author: Fernando Gouvea
A reckless young fellow from Burma,
Found proofs of the theorem of Fermat.
He lived then in terror,
Of finding an error,
Wiles's proof, he suspected, was firmer.
Author: Fernando Gouvea
They said the proof was long and hard,
and painful to behold,
But at the conference at BU,
we got the real dirt.
The proof, it sure is tricky,
but its length isn't so bold--
It doesn't fit the margin,
but it does fit on a shirt.
Author: Joe Silverman
The time has come, Fermat opined,
to talk of many things,
of GL_2 and flat group schemes,
and local Hecke rings,
and which ideals are Eisenstein,
and Wiles's wild flings.
Author: Anonymous
Roses are red,
violets are blue,
Fermat is dead,
but his theorem is true.
Author: Noam Elkies (A Clerihew)
Andrew Wiles
After seven years' tribulations and trials
Saw light at the end of the Tunnell
Covering E by X_1(l).
Author: Noam Elkies (Double Dactyl)
Higgledy-piggledy
Fermat's Last Theorem's
Finished at last, though old
Pierre might have cursed:
"Huge deformation rings?
Semistability?
Cocycles? Crystals!? My
Margins would burst!"
Author: E. B. Burger (Title: Ode to Fermat)
In around 1640, Fermat,
upon his reading of Diophantus
Was led to a romantic assertion that would
From that point on entrance us
Never did he dream that a few words in a
margin could make him a hero
As he wrote that certain equations had no
solutions other than zero.
Many searched for a proof and there may
have been the rumor,
It looks a complete solution will
be found soon by Kummer.
This was not the case and a proof would
not appear out of thin air,
but perhaps using the curve of Frey and
and conjecture of Serre
This strategy indeed works as proven by
Ribet, Taylor, Wiles, and Wiles
Causing the mathematical community at large
to don tearful smiles
Thus although now the spirit of Fermat
is finally content
He is shocked that the proof is not just a
simple method of descent.
Author: Sharon Ann Kineke
We study the proof of Fermat.
Take Shimura-Taniyama
And the Frey elliptic curve.
Between them there is a tie
As suggested by Gerhard Frey.
Along came Jean-Pierre Serre
Who formulated with great care
The episilon conjecture
Which as a tie would serve.
And yes the conjecture did fit
As demonstrated by Ribet.
Then it remained to consider
Representations modular.
Seven years later,
Came the announcement of Wiles.
But that was not the ending,
We needed the Taylor mending.
Now at last we all have smiles.
Author: Marion Cohen
Fermat said the proof was too large
to fit in the right or left marg.
True, back of the paper
or proof made to taper
might help, but he said "I'm in charge."
Now, Wiles didn't mind paper waste.
In fact, it was true to his taste
to use up whole reams
to live up to his dreams,
and he crossed out instead of erased.
Fermat was all snickers and smiles
as he smugly stayed clear of the aisles
and he thought "they'll be glum
"but that proof will succumb
"though it's going to take quite awhiles."