Castres

Colourful houses by the Agout River in the center of Castres. Tanners and dyers have lived and worked here some centuries ago.

Castres has a long history with some very interesting backgrounds and stories. It was even an independent (protestant) republic for a short time (1560). This was the hometown of Jean Jaurès. The Goya museum here is important. CO (Castres olympique), the local rugby team, was french champion three times (1949, 1950, 1993), but what me brought to Castres the first time was Fermat's Last Theorem.

Pierre de Fermat died in Castres in 1665. Here he scribbled his "Last Theorem" into a book, he was just reading. He stated, that no three positive integers a, b, and c can satisfy the equation an + bn = cn for any integer value of n greater than two. Then (probably with a big grin!) he added "Cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi. Hanc marginis exiguitas non caperet" - claiming, that he had a wonderful proof that was too large to fit in the margin.

For 358 years the theorem was a nut too hard to crack. In 1995 Andrew Wiles and Richard Taylor finally published a proof. Fermat was right. The print out of the proof needed 98 pages of paper.

Here is an interview with Andrew Wiles:

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/andrew-wiles-fermat.html


Here a photo from 2008, taken from a different pov:

www.flickr.com/photos/martin-m-miles/4169749494/in/pool-5...