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Path: utzoo!watmath!water!fgmoller
From: fgmoller@water.UUCP (Faron Moller)
Newsgroups: net.math
Subject: Re: Fermat's Last Theorem
Message-ID: <253@water.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-Jan-85 14:02:44 EST
Article-I.D.: water.253
Posted: Tue Jan 22 14:02:44 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 23-Jan-85 05:08:42 EST
Reply-To: fgmoller@water.UUCP (Faron Moller)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 30


To respond to a number of letter's dealing with this January's presentation
of a paper by Chien Wenjen which claimed to have discovered a proof to Fermat's
last theorem, I'd like to provide the following information.

A recent writer provided references to three papers in Portugaliae Mathematica
which also claimed to prove Fermat's last theorem.  It is interesting that
the University of Waterloo library, well-known for math resources, only has
sporadic copies of this  journal, the latest issue being dated 1974.
Over a four-year-period three papers were published by Q A M M Yahya, each of
which claimed the proof of Fermat's theorem.  Obviously, they weren't taken
seriously if the proof is still being sought after.  It is also interesting
that three papers by the same author, claiming to prove one of math's greatest
unsolved riddles, went unnoticed - surely as much fervour should have bbeen
generated over his proofs as over the current proof.

On the other hand, the journal is not completely without credibility:
in looking through past issues, I noted that contributors included:
Alonzo Church, (Church-Turing), John von Neumann, i.n. herstein, Heinz Hopf,
as well as several people at the University of Waterloo. 

What I really found fascinating was the appearance of the name of Chien Wenjen,
in an edition immediately preceding another paper by Yahya, in the list
of contributors.  

It is also interesting that Wenjen's wife thanked D.H. Young on behalf of her
husband, for introducing him to the problem, when this problem is well-known
to every high-school math student.  Furthermore, it would be hard to believe  
that he wouldn't have seen Yahya's solution.
.