QED

Toen Andrew Wiles en Richard Taylor hun bewijs van de Laatste Stelling van Fermat presenteerden, begon Jeremy Teitelbaum een gedichtenwedstrijd over het bewijs. Ondertussen heeft hij de beste gedichten op zijn website staan. Een selectie:

Ted Munger

With an integer greater than 2
It’s something one simply can’t do
If this margin were fat
I’d show you all that
but it’s not so the proof is on you!

Robert Vivian Huxley (met hulp van Kenneth Grahame)

The clever men at Oxford
Computed for hours and hours
But they none of them found a cube or higher
As the sum of two equal powers.

A Wiley don from Cambridge
Cogitated for seven years -
Eventually told his friends
“By Hecke I’m moved to tears!”

“The Taniyama Conjecture’s true
My new solution’s stronger
This proof perfects old Fermat’s note
If marginally longer”

Jonathan Matte

A mathematician named Pierre
Thought “I wonder if someone will care
If I say there’s a proof
And then (somewhat aloof)
Admit I can’t fit it in there.”

Joseph Shaya

The proof of the claim of Fermat,
is truly a marvellous tract.
Did Pierre tease us all
’cause the margin was small,
or his writing was much much too fat?

Anonymous

Roses are red,
violets are blue,
Fermat is dead,
but his theorem is true.

Noam Elkies

Higgledy-piggledy
Fermat’s Last Theorem’s
Finished at last, though old
Pierre might have cursed:

“Huge deformation rings?
Semistability?
Cocycles? Crystals!? My
Margins would burst!”