In June of 1993, the British mathematician Andrew Wiles (b. 1953) delivered a series of lectures on “Modular Forms, Elliptic Curves, and Galois Representations.” Though the audience was not large—the topic required a large amount of background knowledge—it had grown beyond expectations. It was rumored that Wiles would announce something […]
Tag: Group Theory
Quintic Equations, French Politics, and Abstract Algebra
The familiar quadratic formula produces the two solutions of any equation of the form ax2+bx+c. And much more elaborate formulas exist for the three solutions of cubic equations (those with an x3 term) and the four solutions of quartic equations (with an x4 term). Similarly, equations with an x5 term—quintic […]