Lotus Press (WI), 2002 - 17 pages
Lotus Press carries Talbott's reconstruction of the work of Pierre De Ferm al, titled Fermat's Last Theorem. The claim has been made by modern mathematicians that Fermat could not have had a proof for the theorem he formulated. The reasons given for this conviction amount to a belief that some very convoluted and obscure modern mathematical techniques are needed to carry out the proof, techniques certainly not known by Fermat. (They are also largely unknown to mathematics professors of today.) Lively interest was generated by Talbott's book since he provided substantial evidence that Fermat could indeed have had a good proof before he died in 1665. Readers have suggested that a more formal statement of the proof be given, and this suggestion has been followed in Derivatives in Cardinal Arithmetic.Talbott's book is sound, but this new paper makes the logic specially clear, and is a suitable conclusion to a long standing mathematical mystery.