Fermat's Last Theorem / Simon Singh

Fermat's Last Theorem is a book about the beauty of mathematics and the quest for truth and knowledge.
Fermat was a top notch French mathematician who was responsible for a great deal of theorems which are studied in universities worldwide. Fermat was very productive and his knowledge of mathematics was far reaching and encompassed many regions of it. But Fermat also had an annoying habit: he would often forego actually putting the proofs of his theorems into writing, for he was in it for the sense of achievement not the acknowledgement of others.
After he died, a remark he wrote regarding a math puzzle was discovered. The puzzle was the following equation: X^n + Y^n = Z^n (when x, y, z are whole numbers and n is greater than 2). Anyone who ever studied geometry in school is familiar with this equation when n=2 and knows that it has many solutions. In fact it has an infinite number of them. But Fermat claimed to have proven that this equation had no solution when n was greater than 2. The aggravating thing was that he neglected to write it down, or if he did, it was never discovered.
Fermat's assertion became a challenge for many mathematicians who took to the task eagerly. The question seemed easy to understand, any child could grasp it, but the solution eluded the minds of great mathematicians for 350 years. Simon Singh details how many struggled with Fermat's last Theorem and failed.
The beauty of the book is that mathematicians who are mostly viewed as dull and obscure figures turn out to be extremely human and fragile, full of desires and obsessions, subject to depressions and setbacks and lead an interesting and passionate life.
As many tried and failed, inch by inch progress was made and in the process a number of great discoveries were made which illuminated other fields of interest within mathematics. Singh not only describes the actual struggles with Fermat's Last Theorem but other advances in math which contributed to the final solution discovered by Andrew Wales in the 1990's.
Andrew Wiles, a British mathematician, stumbled upon the Theorem as a boy of ten and made it a life long quest to find a solution for it. A brilliant mathematician, he spent years trying to solve the puzzle without success. An assumption made in the 1950's by two Japanese mathematicians which also eluded proof became the turning point, for it was proven that should their assumption be proven as correct, so should Fermat's Last Theorem turn out to be true.
At the end, it was this assumption which Andrew Wiles proved, subsequently coming up with the proof to Fermat's last Theorem.
In conclusion, for anyone who likes math or studied it, this will be a great read because many of the people involved are known to us from theorems which we agonized over in school. To anyone who did not, this is an opportunity to see a new aspect of math and science which is warm and emotional.