Mathematicians Of The Day

27th June



On this day in 1908, the Göttingen Academy of Sciences announced a prize of one hundred thousand marks, from the will of Paul Wolfskehl, for a proof of Fermat's last theorem. Thousands of attempts at a proof were submitted. The prize would have been worth about a million pounds in today's money, but when Andrew Wiles collected the prize in 1997 it was about 75 000 DM.

The postage stamp of one of today's mathematicians at THIS LINK was issued in 2016.

Click on for a poster.


Quotation of the day

From Augustus De Morgan
The imaginary expression √(-a) and the negative expression -b, have this resemblance, that either of them occurring as the solution of a problem indicates some inconsistency or absurdity. As far as real meaning is concerned, both are imaginary, since 0 - a is as inconceivable as √(-a).
Said in 1831