Descartes' Secret Notebook - A True Tale of Mathematics, Mysticism and the Quest to Understand the Universe
What Aczel did for mathematician Fermat (Fermat's Last Theorem) he now does for Descartes in this splendid study about the French philosopher and mathematician (1596–1650) most famous for his paradigm-smashing declaration, "I think; therefore, I am." Part historical sketch, part biography and part detective story, Aczel's chronicle of Descartes's hidden work hinges on his lost secret notebook. Of 16 pages of coded manuscript, one and a half were copied in 1676 by fellow philosopher and mathematician Leibniz.
This volume contains expanded versions of lectures given at an instructional conference on number theory and arithmetic geometry held August 9 through 18, 1995 at Boston University. Contributor's includeThe purpose of the conference, and of this book, is to introduce and explain the many ideas and techniques used by Wiles in his proof that every (semi-stable) elliptic curve over Q is modular, and to explain how Wiles' result can be combined with Ribet's theorem and ideas of Frey and Serre to show, at long last, that Fermat's Last Theorem is true.