His proof was over 100 pages long and took him seven years to complete. ✍️ Fermat’s last theorem is one of the most famous and challenging problems in mathematics. It was first stated by Pierre de Fermat, a French lawyer and amateur mathematician, in the margin of a copy of Diophantus’s Arithmetica. He claimed to have a proof that was too large to fit in the margin, but he never revealed it to anyone. The theorem remained unproven for more than three centuries, despite the efforts of many mathematicians. The first complete proof of Fermat’s last theorem was given by Andrew Wiles, a British mathematician, in 1995. He used techniques from algebraic geometry and number theory that were not available in Fermat’s time. His proof was over 100 pages long and took him seven years to complete. Wiles’s proof was initially flawed, as he discovered a gap in his argument in 1993. He had to work with another mathematician, Richard Taylor, to fix the error and publish a revised version of his proof in 1994.