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0 pointsanthony__j1y ago0 comments

haha, that's pretty clever. makes you wonder if fermat was doing a similar prank with his margins

0 comments

It's generally believed that Fermat thought he had a proof, but probably almost immediately remembered that not everything is a Unique Factorization Domain, so the "obvious proof" fails. Then he didn't bother returning to correct the error.

So no, probably not.

(+) I should go and learn more about the specifics of this to make sure I'm relating it correctly.

EDIT: (++) OK, here's what I was thinking about:

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/953462/what-was-lam...

EDIT2: (++) Second link with similar details:

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/324740/fermats-proo...

ducttapecrown1y ago

I just recently learned that the note in Fermat's margin was published posthumously by his son! So Fermat never necessarily publicly claimed to have a proof. So I would imagine you're absolutely correct.

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