On June 23, 1993, the mathematician Andrew Wiles gave the last of three lectures detailing his solution to Fermat’s last theorem, a problem that had remained unsolved for three and a half centuries.

The proof Wiles finally came up with (helped by Richard Taylor) was something Fermat would never have dreamed up. It tackled the theorem indirectly, by means of an enormous bridge that mathematicians ...

In 1994, an earthquake of a proof shook up the mathematical world. The mathematician Andrew Wiles had finally settled Fermat’s Last Theorem, a central problem in number theory that had remained open ...

A mathematician will turn a groundbreaking 100-page proof into computer code. The proof tool, Lean, lets users turn proofs written in prose into rules and logic for testing. Kevin Buzzard already uses ...

The mathematicians who toiled on the famous enigma also devised powerful forms of end-to-end encryption. By William J. Broad Defenses against digital snoopers keep getting stronger. Encryption is what ...

Andrew Wiles stumbled across the world's greatest mathematical puzzle, Fermat's Theorem, as a ten-year-old schoolboy, beginning a 30-year quest with just one goal in mind: to solve the problem that ...

Maxine Calle is a 2023 AAAS Mass Media Fellow at The Conversation U.S. and she receives funding from the National Science Foundation. David Bressoud does not work for, consult, own shares in or ...