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, yet proving it would baffle the finest minds for more than 350 years, and would become the Holy Grail of mathematics. In Fermat's Enigma, 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. From nineteenth-century French mathematician and physicist Sophie Germain, who pretended to be a man in order to pursue her studies, to Princeton professor Andrew Wiles, obsessed with the theorem since the age of ten, Simon Singh captures every step of this remarkable quest.

Compelling, dramatic, and entirely accessible, Fermat's Enigma is a mesmerizing tale of heartbreak and mastery, and one that will forever change your feelings about mathematics.