Suugaku Girl: Fermat no Saishuu Teiri “What’s the big deal about Fermat’s last theorem?” Yuri asked.“It’s famous,” I said. “So simple anyone can understand it, but it took centuries for mathematicians to prove it’s true.”With a note scribbled in the margin of a book in the 1600s, Fermat set in motion centuries of effort spent unraveling this enigma. It would require 358 years and the development of entirely new fields of mathematics to provide a definitive solution to what is now recognized as one of the greatest mathematical problems of all time.