A Claremont man thinks he may have solved the world’s most difficult maths problem, Fermat’s Last Theorem, which has not been solved in 344 years.
Peter van Vliet, 58, has been trying for years to solve the problem by using his computer, but it wasn’t until he picked up pencil and paper that he thought he might have found the solution.
“I propose it is the simple proof by using simple logic. It is possible with just logic to solve it and therefore avoid the pitfalls of getting caught up in formulas,” he said.
Van Vliet published his proposed proof in an advertisement in a weekend newspaper and hoped people would respond with whether it was correct.
But Van Vliet’s claim has already been met with scepticism, with a UCT professor saying it is highly unlikely the solution has been found. According to a number of websites dedicated to the theorem, Fermat’s Last Theorem states that no three positive integers x, y and z can satisfy the equation xn + yn = z for any integer value of n greater than two.
This theorem was first created by French lawyer Pierre de Fermat in 1637. He famously scribbled a note in the margin of a copy of Arithmetica, an ancient Greek text, where he claimed he had a proof that was too large to fit in the space.
Scores of mathematicians set about trying to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem, but none was successful until 1995, when Andrew Wiles’s proof was officially published and accepted.
But still one question remained. What was Fermat’s original proof?
Experts believed Wiles’s proof was too complicated to be the same as Fermat’s.
Van Vliet, who works as a computer programmer for a car rental company and lives alone, had tried to solve Fermat’s Last Theorem for years.
Then, in January, he bought the book The Last Theorem, a 2008 science-fiction novel co-written by Arthur C Clarke and Frederik Pohl.
The book is about a young Sri Lankan mathematician who finds a simple proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem.
Van Vliet said he was inspired by the storyline in which one character urges another to solve the theorem as Fermat would have - by using a pencil and paper.
Thinking he had found a proof, he published it in the Saturday and Sunday editions of the Weekend Argus. The adverts cost R10 000.
But John Webb, professor of mathematics at UCT, said it was highly unlikely the proof was correct.
* Readers are invited to send their comments to this reporter. - Cape Times