Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh

Ten year old Andrew Wiles, lover of mathematics, wandered into his village library in 1963 and picked up a book called The Last Problem.  It had to do with notes left in the margin of another book in the seventeenth century by French mathematician Pierre Fermat referencing the solution to a problem that dates back to the 6th century B.C. and a Greek mathematician named Pythagoras of Samos.  All of us learned the Pythagorean theorem in school - "In any given right triangle, the square upon the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides".  Pythagoras and other great minds wondered, "Is this true for any other values other than squared?" "Is there a possibility that somewhere  the value of the hypotenuse cubed is equal to the sum of.... or times four.... or times 24?"  Fermat left notes in the margin of a book saying he had solved this problem but the solution was too long to record in the book he held.  His solution was never found and Wiles was driven from the age of 10 (and I must add because of a book he found in a library - just saying) to discover a solution.  The story ends in 1993 with Wiles' announcement of his discovery.  From 1987 to 1993 Wiles spent all his time working alone on this one single problem.  Most of the mathematics shared would be incomprehensible to most of us but that is not the real story.  It is the quest.  It is math as philosophy, as logic, where a solution to a single problem might be 100 pages of complicated argument and little to do with numbers.  There may be no practical application for this problem and its solution but the reason for the search is the same as the reason we climb any mountain or explore any distant planet - because it is there and we want to know.  For people like Wiles, it is a need to know.