Inc1udes bibliographies and indexes. I. Fermat's theorem. I. Title. QA244.R5 512'.74 79-14874 All rights reserved.No part of this book may be translated or reprodueed in any form without written permission from Springer-Verlag.
This text originated as a lecture delivered November 20, 1984, at Queen's University, in the undergraduate colloquim series established to honor Professors A. J. Coleman and H. W. Ellis and to acknowledge their long lasting interest in the quality of teaching undergraduate students.In another colloquim lecture, my colleague Morris Orzech, who had consulted the latest edition of the Guilllless Book oj Records, remainded me very gently that the most "innumerate" people of the world are of a certain tribe in Mato Grosso, Brazil. They do not even have a word to express the number "two" or the concept of plurality. "Yes Morris, I'm from Brazil, but my book will contain numbers different from 'one.' " He added that the most boring 800-page book is by two Japanese mathematicians (whom I'll not name), and consists of about 16 million digits of the number 11."I assure you Morris, that in spite of the beauty of the apparent randomness of the decimal digits of 11, I'll be sure that my text will include also some words."
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.