Notes from 54th International STC Conference
Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 13-16, 2007

Keynote Address: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Production of the Documentary "Fermat's Last Theorem"

Simon Singh

Simon Singh is an author, journalist, television producer, and the Society's honorary fellow for 2007 and is the featured keynote speaker at the Summit. Singh is the author of three books: "Fermat's Last Theorem" (the first book about mathematics to become a number one bestseller in the United Kingdom — the American version is called "Fermat's Enigma"), "The Code Book", and "Big Bang". He has produced and directed BBC programs including "Tomorrow's World", "Horizon", and "Fermat's Last Theorem", which won a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award. "Fermat's Last Theorem" also aired in the United States (retitled as "The Proof") and was nominated for an Emmy. He continues to present radio and television programs and is involved in projects that build links between universities and schools. Singh developed the Enigma Schools Project. This educational program brings a World War II Enigma machine to schools and delivers code-breaking workshops designed to engage students ages eight to eighteen in mathematics. With a PhD in particle physics from the University of Cambridge, he has also worked as a physicist in England and taught at schools in South Africa and India.

Session Description: Singh presented an intriguing "backstage" look at the filming of this documentary on mathematics, which drew an amazing viewership of 2 million in its UK debut.

• Presentation began with a clip from the opening of 50-minute documentary Fermat's Last Theorem, introducing the protagonist, a nerdy mathematician named Andrew Wiles.
• Fermat's Last Theorem: It is impossible for a cube to be written as a sum of two cubes or a fourth power to be written as the sum of two fourth powers or, in general, for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as the sum of two like powers.
Xⁿ + Yⁿ ≠ Zⁿ, where n > 2
• German industrialist named Wolfgang tried to solve it the night he planned to commit suicide, and it gave him a new lease on life. When Wolfgang died in 1908, he bequeathed a prize of $1 million to anyone who could prove the theorem.
• Since then, many mathematicians have tried to solve this 350-year-old problem.
• What is a proof? It's very different in mathematics than in science or in law. The theorem could not be proven just by plugging in numbers, not even prime numbers, because there are an infinite number of numbers to be plugged in.
• In producing a documentary for a lay audience, the producer has to take certain liberties (e.g., editing mathematician John Conway's reference to "primes" to "numbers," because the majority of the audience wouldn't understand the former).
• Similarly, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was guilty of a couple of simplifications which ultimately made it more effective in communicating its key messages.
• However, the producer walks a very thin ethical line in taking such liberties. He/she must not cross over into misrepresentation. Legitimate clarification for a lay audience is not the same as deliberate manipulation of a non-technical audience.
• When Cambridge referees went through Wiles' 200-page detailed proof, they found a serious flaw. At first, it looked like this blew the proof, but after 13 months Wiles found an acceptable correction for the error, which sustained the proof.
• Much notoriety accompanied Wiles' solving of a 350-year mathematical riddle (including an interview on Larry King Live, extensive media coverage, etc.)
• Singh went on to write about code-breaking, drawing upon his physicist's love for pure mathematics.
• Next came cosmology. Katie Melua: Call off the Search. "We are 12 billion light years from the edge... That's a guess, No one can ever say it's true, But I know that I'll always be with you." He dissected it from the standpoint of Big Bang Physics (13.7 billion years, and "it's not a guess.")
• His version: "We are 13.7 billion light-years form the edge of the observable universe, That's a good estimate with well-defined errors bars, And with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you."
• Katie Melua called him about "messing with my lyrics." She actually re-recorded a version with his words!