From: Geraldo Origami Subject: Re: For mathematicians lacking flexibility Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2000 17:53:46 -0400 Newsgroups: sci.math Summary: [missing] John Savard wrote: > Geraldo Origami wrote, in part: > > >By the way, as far as mathematicians are concerned, Frey already > >solved FLT in the 1980's. > > May I ask what you meant by that? "Frey solved FLT" is a direct quote from one of the Princeton number theorists, Sarnak if I remember correctly. It means the obvious thing: given what Frey did, it was clear why FLT was true and how to prove it: establish Frey's reduction to the modularity conjecture (Ribet, Serre, ...); then wait for a proof of modularity (Wiles, Taylor, ...). Note that this emphasizes how huge a breakthrough Wiles made, rather than diminishing his achievement. He proved _much_ more than FLT, at a time when the prevailing wisdom was that proving modularity of rational elliptic curves was totally out of reach.