How long does it take to read Fermat's Last Theorem?
the story of a riddle that confounded the world's greatest minds for 358 years
Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh takes about 6 hours 12 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 6 hours 12 minutes
A weekend read
First published 1997. 338 pages, about 92,950 words.
13 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 10 hours 20 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 6 hours 12 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 3 hours 52 minutes |
The page count is the median across 33 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
xn + yn = zn, where n represents 3, 4, 5, ...no solution "I have discovered a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain." With these words, the seventeenth-century French mathematician Pierre de Fermat threw down the gauntlet to future generations. What came to be known as Fermat's Last Theorem looked simple; proving it, however, became the Holy Grail of mathematics, baffling its finest minds for more than 350 years. In Fermat's Enigma--based on the author's award-winning documentary film, which aired on PBS's "Nova"--Simon Singh tells the astonishingly entertaining story of the pursuit of that grail, and the lives that were devoted to, sacrificed for, and saved by it. Here is a mesmerizing tale of heartbreak and mastery that will forever change your feelings about mathematics.
Subjects: Fermat's last theorem, mathematics, number theory, elliptic curves, proof, Wiskunde
