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The Professionals
In the modern world even the professional codebreakers
have webpages:
http://www.gchq.gov.uk
http://www.nsa.gov
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The Protagonists
Harry Schulz Vandiver was a number theorist at Texas University in the 1930's. He was fascinated by Fermat's last theorem and was one of the first mathematicians to do extensive computer experiments to investigate the conjecture. He even wrote the Encyclopaedia Britannica entry on the problem. He led a colourful life (or should that be "colorful"?) but not quite as colourful as the one we've written for him in this story. To the best of our knowledge he never did work as a Private Investigator, but then the logical methods of the best detectives are not far removed from those of the working mathematician, and, of course, code-breaking is a speciality of both professions. Unusually Harry really did live in a hotel, though not the Alamo, and you can read more about his life at:
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Vandiver.html
A short biography in pdf format
Our heroine Agatha Highfield is entirely fictional, though some aspects of her character reflect those of other feisty women fighting to be accepted in what was then truly a man's world. In fact she bears a passing resemblence to Gertrude Bell, and amazing woman whose real life was more incredible than that of Agatha. Archaeologist, diplomat and first world war spy, Agatha's life is recorded in great detail on a website which includes extracts from her diaries at: http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/home/index.htm
All the more remarkable is the true story of Sophie Germain, an 18th-century woman who assumed a man's identity in order to pursue her passion -- attempting to prove Fermat's Last Theorem.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/germain.html
The centerpiece of our story, the Babylon Stone is also is entirely fictional, though again it has a real life counterpart in the famous Plimpton 322, a slab of stone inscribed with Babylonian markings which has intrigued mathematicians and historians for many years. You can read more about it at:
http://www.swan.ac.uk
The Mathematical Association of America carried a great article about deciphering slabs like Plimpton 322, and you can download it at:
http://www.maa.org/news/monthly105-120.pdf
Of course there is one unseen star of the show, Fermat's Last theorem itself. This problem, which baffled many generations of mathematicians, was finally proved by the British mathematician Andrew Wiles in 1995. Simon Singh has written a fascinating account of the history of the problem in his book "Fermat's last theorem". You can read more about it on the web at:
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Fermat's_last_theorem.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/
While we now know a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, there was a possibility that it might have been one of the so-called "undecidable" problems in mathematics. These are statements that are true but can never be proven to be true using the rules. Harry alluded to this possibility in his Encyclopaedia Britannica article on the subject, and you can read an online account which explains what this means at the following site. Interestingly not only are there undecidable statements in mathematics, for some statements it is impossible to decide whether or not they are undecidable! This discovery of the young genius Alan Turing (who helped to break Enigma in the second world war) led him to develop the theory of computation which lies at the heart of every computer in the world today.
http://fermat.workjoke.com/flt6.htm
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