The Core of Fermat’s Last Theorem Just Got Superpowered | Quanta Magazine
By extending the scope of the key insight behind Fermat’s Last Theorem, four mathematicians have made great strides toward building a “grand unified theory” of math.
Hasnain says:
“Gee secured the team a room in the basement of the Hausdorff Research Institute, where they were unlikely to be disturbed by itinerant mathematicians. There, they spent an entire week working on Pan’s theorem, one 12-hour day after the next, only coming up to ground level occasionally for caffeine. “After a coffee, we would always joke that we had to go back to the mine,” Pilloni said.
The grind paid off. “There were many twists to come later,” Calegari said, “but at the end of that week I thought we more or less had it.”
It took another year and a half to turn Calegari’s conviction into a 230-page proof, which they posted online in February (opens a new tab). Putting all the pieces together, they’d proved that any ordinary abelian surface has an associated modular form.”