``Voici ce que j'ai trouvé:'' Sophie Germain's grand plan to prove Fermat's last theorem (Q619765): Difference between revisions

Based on their study of Sophie Germain's manuscripts on Fermat's Last Theorem (see also [\textit{A. del Centina}, ``Unpublished manuscripts of Sophie Germain and a revaluation of her work on Fermat's last theorem'', Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 62, No. 4, 349--392 (2008; Zbl 1202.01060)] for a clear presentation of Germain's results), the authors call ``for a reassessment of her work in number theory''. Germain's idea for attacking this diophantine equation by trying to derive contradictions through studying the reductions of the equation modulo various prime numbers does not even work, as Germain knew (see p. 664), for the exponent \(n = 3\); nevertheless the authors call it a ``full-fledged, highly developed, sophisticated plan''. The conclusion that ``Sophie Germain was a much more impressive number theorist than anyone has ever known'' is somewhat strange, given that the only correct results on Fermat's Last Theorem among Germain's papers are those that Legendre made well known by including them into his ``Théorie de Nombres''.