FERMAT'S LAST THEOREM

18/09/2009 (Day 24: Retirement)

 One thing I love about being retired is that I can read as late in the night as I please. Previously even if I was at a cliff hanger moment in a book I had to stop and try to sleep. Otherwise I would not be in a fit state to go for work in the morning. I do not mean the physical act of going but performing at a professional level at work.

I stayed quite late last night till 2am and finished Stieg Larsson's book "the girl who played with fire". The end was quite unexpected, exactly as a good crime book should be. Then I finished my coffee and went to bed. I got up late today and that too with quite a bit of effort and felt tired. But by the time I had three cups of tea and reviewed all the daily papers on the net, I was feeling much better and ready to face the challenges of retirement.

I forgot to mention a peculiar coincidence. The book I read before the one I finished last night was a sc-fi novel "the last theorem" by A.C. Clarke. Both these books are as different from one another as possible, in style, in content, in location and were published years apart. But the main protagonists of both the books loved Mathematics and were naturally very good at it. And both were fascinated with Fermat's Last theorem. Both Clarke and Larsson explained it well in layman's language. I have heard of this theorem before but never understood why it fascinated the mathematicians all over world since mid 17^th century. Now I do. But I do not think I will get the bug to find a proof for the theorem. At the moment my math knowledge is being used to calculate simple and compound interest rates on savings and mortgages to make good the drastic shortfall in the income and satisfy the equation " x = x/4 " where x stands for monthly wage till last month.

I am sure there is a way to do this. Just give me some time.

See you.