Re: The Fermat-Wiles Theorem

Zdzislaw Meglicki (Zdzislaw.Meglicki@cisr.anu.edu.au)
Mon, 14 Nov 1994 20:27:22 +1100 (EST)

Lyle Burkhead <LYBRHED@delphi.com> writes:

> But if you spend 20 years and millions of dollars to verify something
> that is already known to be true, in what sense are you "demonstrating
> the enormous usefulness of such a system"?

If a mathematician as good as Wiles didn't find a mistake in his first
proof, then how can you be sure that there wouldn't be some very subtle
error in his next proof? If you can demonstrate in a reasonable time and
without spending unreasonable amount of money that you can check the
correctness of such difficult proofs with an objective machine tool, it
will mean that your technology has finally come of age and that it
deserves a serious consideration.

Greetings from Down Under,

Zdzislaw Meglicki, Zdzislaw.Meglicki@cisr.anu.edu.au,
Parallel Computing Research Facility, CISR && Plasma Theory Group, RSPhysSE
The Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T., 0200,
Australia, fax: +61-6-249-0747, tel: +61-6-249-0158