Post Lot Text
First edition of Fermat's commentary, which contains his famous theorem. He had written it and other observations in the margins of his copy of Bachet's 1621 editio princeps of Diophantus (see lot 63), claiming that he could demonstrate his proposition, but that the margins were too narrow to transcribe it. After his death, Fermat's eldest son Clément-Samuel published the marginalia in this Toulouse edition of Diophantus. Although simple in form, the proposition became known as the single most difficult problem in mathematics until Andrew Wiles of Princeton finally published 130 pages of calculations as proof, using the most advanced techniques of modern mathematics. Simon Singh, Fermat's Enigma (New York 1997).